Contemporary Latin American authors
Contemporary Latin American Book Reviews
LALT ISSUE 36.
DECEMBER 2025
LATN AMERICAN Literature Today
In our thirty-sixth issue of Latin American Literature Today, we highlight the role of the literary critic with a cover feature dedicated to Christopher Domínguez Michael. Domínguez Michael is recognized as one of his generation’s definitive critics and intellectuals, and is the author of essential histories, biographies, and anthologies dedicated to the literature of his native Mexico and beyond. This issue’s second dossier focuses on the often-ignored subject of the literary diary, with reflections on the writing of three Chilean diarists: Álvaro Campos, Francisco Díaz Klaassen, and Gonzalo Millán.
We also include interviews with Jacobo Siruela, Jaime Collyer, Mariana de Althaus, and Héctor Abad Faciolince, poetry by Ismael Gavilan, Carlos Cociña, Martín Tonlameyotl, Nora Alarcón, and Maria Emanuelle Cardoso, an essay on artificial intelligence by Kenneth Kronenberg, previews of new books in translation by Daniela Rea, Edgardo Rivera Martínez, and Yuliana Ortiz Ruano.
Plus reviews of twelve new books from across Latin America, including Giannina Braschi’s Putinoika reviewed by Jonathan B. Toro.
LALT EDITOR’S NOTE
Marcelo Rioseco
The bad, the flawed in a work of art can generally
be identified with great precision, while we can
never be entirely fair to what is good, especially to
what is perfect.
Marcel Reich-Ranicki
It is impossible not to agree with current statistics: literary critics are few, and the best must be searched for under rocks. Literary criticism, even in its most reduced form (the book review) has gradually disappeared, along with cultural supplements, literary gazettes, and book magazines. Discussions on social media, contrary to expectations, have impoverished the debates, filling them with controversies and simplifications that avoid the essential, which is, in essence, talking about literature, talking about books as what they are: books. The outlook for literary culture in Latin America does not seem encouraging. Fortunately, every era has its exceptions. In our time, it seems to me, that exception is embodied by the Mexican critic Christopher Domínguez Michael.
The cover dossier of this edition of LALT is dedicated to his work over more than forty uninterrupted years. Domínguez Michael is not only a literary critic; he is also a biographer and has played a central role in constructing a historiography of Mexican literature. His work has been an exercise in extraordinary freedom and, as such, not without controversy. Both are positive signs of serious work. Domínguez Michael is the first literary critic to appear on the cover of LALT. With this, we wish to send a clear signal. Criticism matters to us, and it matters deeply. That is why we are pleased to have brought together in this dossier not only essays by José Balza and Nicolás Bernales, a letter from the Venezuelan critic Guillermo Sucre, and a conversation between our author and another highly experienced literary critic, Will Corral, but also two essays by Domínguez Michael recently published in his latest book, El crítico sin estatua (Sauvage Atelier, 2025). We hope this dossier serves as an invitation to read one of the most important critics writing in Spanish today.
The second dossier is dedicated to diaries and dietarios (the latter term is not mine but Vila-Matas’s, as is worth clarifying) written by Chilean authors. The tradition of literary diaries in Chile is not very extensive, but, to my surprise, things have changed in recent years. Some poets, novelists, and essayists have turned to a kind of literature in which it is often more important to account for what is read than for what is lived. In this dossier we publish three essays. The first focuses on the legendary diary of the Chilean poet Gonzalo Millán, Veneno de escorpión azul (recently published in Spain by La Esporádica, 2025). Another author included is fiction writer Francisco Díaz Klaassen, who in 2023 published a book in the same vein titled Mínimas (Alfaguara). The final author is Álvaro Campos,who, with two books—Diarios (Laurel, 2022) and Negocio familiar (Tusquets, 2025)—has generated, in the ever-contentious Chilean literary world, significant barking and more than a few bites as well. These are books written by voracious, sometimes arbitrary readers, full of abundant quotations; in other words, books that reveal an unbridled passion for literature. Gonzalo Millán is, in this context, an exception: Veneno de escorpión azul is not a dietario but a diary of death, or rather, a diary of life and death. Its reissue confirms the durability of Millán’s work.
FOR THE FULL EDITION OF LALT click here.
Contemporary Latin American Book reviews
Las vestidas de Hernán Vera Álvarez
BY GASTÓN VIRKEL
La persona regresa, o novela de Luis Moreno Villamediana
BY CÉSAR TORRES BARILLAS
Trato con el viento/Trato com o vento: 22 voces de la poesía brasileña (selección y traducción de Jesús Montoya)
BY MARCO ANTONIO BOJORQUEZ MARTÍNEZ
Minimosca de Gustavo Faverón Patriau
BY FÉLIX TERRONES
La vida que yo viví de Magda Portal
BY OLGA MUÑOZ CARRASCO
Cuadernos de Ismael Gavilán
BY BENJAMÍN CARRASCO BRAVO
El vientre de todas las guerras de Armando Romero
BY ANTONIO GARCÍA LOZADA
Un animal impronunciable de Natasha Rangel
BY YÉIBER ROMÁN
Botadero de Luis Enrique Belmonte
BY NÉSTOR MENDOZA
De sur a norte: Panorama crítico de las escritoras latinoamericanas en el siglo XXI de Brenda Morales Muñoz
BY ALBERTO HERNÁNDEZ
Mis piletas alemanas de Juan Vitulli
BY CHRISTIAN ELGUERA OLORTEGUI
Contemporary Latin American authors
Hispanic Heritage Month Books
New York Public Library picks for Hispanic Heritage
https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL229683A/Giannina_Braschi
Keywords and tags: contemporary Latin American authors; Giannina Braschi; MGustavo Faverón Patriau; Christopher Dominguez Michael; Alvaro D. Campos.