fiction.wikisort.org - Writer

Benjamín Labatut is a Chilean writer. He was born in 1980 in Rotterdam. He lived in several cities, including The Hague, Buenos Aires and Lima; when he was 14 years old he moved to Santiago, Chile. He studied journalism in the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile ('PUC or UC Chile) (Spanish: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile).

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Benjamin Labatut
Born	Benjamín Labatut 1980 (age 41–42) Rotterdam, Netherlands
Nationality	Chilean
Occupation	Writer
Notable work	La Antártica empieza aquí
Awards	Santiago Municipal Literature Award (2013)

Early life

Labatut was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He spent his childhood in The Hague, Buenos Aires, and Lima. He moved to Santiago, at the age of 14.

Writing

Labatut's 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 aided him 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

When We Cease to Understand the World

Labatut's third book, When We Cease to Understand the World, was published in 2020 by Pushkin Press. He said 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."^{[citation needed]}

Ricardo Baixera, a literary critic for El Periódico, maintained that it was a "very strange fiction that from the first page questions the parameters of reality, and what we understand by literature."^{[citation needed]} John Banville, who described the book in The Guardian as "ingenious, intricate and deeply disturbing", said that the book "could be defined as a non-fiction novel".[2]

Roberto Careaga, a journalist from El Mercurio argued 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".^{[citation needed]}

Ruth Franklin, writing in The New Yorker, argued that

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 been translated into 22 languages by 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 the 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

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