Benjamín Labatut

Benjamín Labatut is a Chilean writer. He was born in Rotterdam in 1980, and spent his infancy in The Hague, Buenos Aires, and Lima. He moved to Santiago at the age of 14.

Benjamin Labatut
Born
Benjamín Labatut

1980 (age 41–42)
Rotterdam, Netherlands
NationalityChilean
OccupationWriter
Notable work
La Antártica empieza aquí
AwardsSantiago Municipal Literature Award (2013)

Works

His first book of stories, La Antártica empieza aquí, won the Premio Caza de Letras 2009, awarded by UNAM and Alfaguara in Mexico. It also won the Santiago Municipal Literature Award in the short story category in 2013. His second book, Después de la luz, came out in 2016, followed by Un verdor terrible, which was published in English by Pushkin Press and nominated for the 2021 International Booker Prize.[1][2]

One of his main literary references was the Chilean poet Samir Nazal, whom he met in 2005 and who acted as a mentor during his early days. Nazal was his guide during the writing of the first book he published, "Antarctica Starts Here," a collection of seven stories. Other influences he has recognized include Pascal Quignard, Eliot Weinberger, William Burroughs, Roberto Bolaño, and W. G. Sebald.

In 2016, the Hueders publishing house launched After the Light, a book that in the words of Javiera Guajardo "is a journey through incidents in the lives of a diversity of historical figures: Buddhist monks, scientists like Albert Einstein, psychoanalysts like Sigmund Freud, mathematicians like Srinivasa Ramanujan or writers like Jorge Luis Borges, but who have in common the fact that their ideas broke molds and redefined basic conditions in their time.

When We Cease to Understand the World

If his second book was already difficult to classify, his third, When We Cease to Understand the World, published in 2020 by Pushkin Press, is much more so. Ricardo Baixera, a literary critic for El Periódico, maintains that it is a "very strange fiction that from the first page questions the parameters of reality, and what we understand by literature."

Labatut crafted a metaphysical novel, a genre in which authors such as Leonardo Sciascia, Boris Vian, Jordi Bonells, Javier Argüello, or Jérôme Ferrari have stood out. For Camilo, Marks, Chilean literary critic, "the knowledge and mastery that Labatut exhibits in When We Cease to Understand the World are astonishing and admirable." Roberto Careaga, a journalist from El Mercurio writes that the author follows "those scientists who captivated him, but it is not a collection of biographies: intense and variegated, it is a volume of stories strung along the brilliant paths of 20th-century science that ended in the unknown and sometimes in pure darkness. They refer to real events, but Labatut ... adds a dose of essay and also fiction".

The Irish novelist John Banville, who described the book in The Guardian as "ingenious, intricate and deeply disturbing", says that the book " could be defined as a non-fiction novel",[2] while Labatut himself affirms that "it is a book made up by an essay (which is not chemically pure), two stories that try not to be stories, a short novel, and a semi-biographical prose piece."

Author Ruth Franklin writing in The New Yorker reviews When We Cease to Understand the World more critically. "There is liberation in the vision of fiction’s capabilities that emerges here—the sheer cunning with which Labatut embellishes and augments reality, as well as the profound pathos he finds in the stories of these men. But there is also something questionable, even nightmarish, about it. If fiction and fact are indistinguishable in any meaningful way, how are we to find language for those things we know to be true?"[3]

When We Cease to Understand the World has enthroned Labatut in the international arena: it has been translated into 22 languages by the best publishers from Germany, China, the United States, France, Holland, England, and Italy. The English edition of the book was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021, and in July 2021, Barack Obama included this book in his last reading list for the summer, which Obama shared on his Twitter account.[4] It was selected for the New York Times Book Review's "10 Best Books of 2021" list.[5]

References
  1. "Labatut, Benjamín".
  2. "When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut review – the dark side of science". the Guardian. September 10, 2020. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  3. "A Cautionary Tale About Science Raises Uncomfortable Questions About Fiction". The New Yorker. September 3, 2021. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  4. Obama, Barack (July 10, 2021). "Barack Obama Summer Reading List, 2021". Twitter. Archived from the original on July 12, 2021. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  5. "The 10 Best Books of 2021". The New York Times. November 30, 2021. Retrieved December 18, 2021.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.