Artificial Respiration
Ricardo Piglia · 1941–2017 · Argentina
Originally Respiración artificial (Spanish) · translated by Daniel Balderston
Why it matters
A missing-persons search unfolds through letters, literary theory, and the unspoken shadow of Argentina's dictatorship. A novel about what fiction can still say when the state is listening, written and published under censorship.
At a glance
political novelpostmodernepistolary
Difficulty 8/10slow pace224 pagesLetters, essays, and literary theory interleave to circle what censorship forbids saying directly.
Deep dive
The missing-persons plot is a decoy; the novel's real subject is how far fiction can travel, in code, when saying the plain thing out loud would be dangerous.
Where to go next
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