The Diaries of Emilio Renzi- Formative Years

A giant of contemporary Latin American literature, Argentine novelist Ricardo Piglia was known for stories, novels, operas, screenplays, and essays, but his magnum opus is a compilation of 327 secret notebooks. In these diaries composed over nearly six decades, Piglia imagined himself as his literary alter ego, Emilio Renzi. Like Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman, Renzi stars in many of his creator’s works—perhaps most notably in Piglia’s 1981 novel about Argentina’s Dirty War, Artificial Respiration. In the novels, Renzi is a detective; in the notebooks that comprise The Diaries of Emilio Renzi, he is something more complex—a multilayered reconstruction of the self that is teased out over these intricate, illuminating pages. 
As Piglia/Renzi develops as a reader and writer, falls in love, and tussles with his tyrannical father, we get eye-opening perspectives on Latin America’s tumultuous twentieth century. Obsessed with the literary giants—from Borges andCortázar (both of whom he knew), to Kafka and Camus—The Diaries comprise a celebration of reading as a vital, existential activity. 
In 2011, when Piglia learned he had a fatal illness, he raced to complete his mysterious masterwork as rumors about the book intensified among his many fans. First released in Spanish as a trilogy to tremendous applause, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi cements Piglia’s place in the global canon.