Argentina’s La Bestia Revives English Authors in Spanish

Earlier this month at a writer's panel at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL), Argentine poet Mempo Giardinelli lamented the current state of publishing in Argentina. Argentina, Giardinelli recalled, used to translate, edit, and publish mass volumes of foreign literature. That Argentina, he insisted, doesn't exist anymore.

But a brief stroll down the aisles of Guadalajara suggested otherwise. Independent presses like Eterna Cadencia and La Caja Negra seem to carry equal parts literature in translation and Spanish language titles while one press, La Bestia Equilatera, is almost unilaterally focused on publishing literature in translation.