Martín Kohan

ARGENTINA, 1967

HERRALDE NOVEL PRIZE 2007

Martín Kohan teaches literary theory at the University of Buenos Aires. He has published various books of essays, story collections, and seven novels. His work is published by some of the most prestigious publishing houses in Europe, including Anagrama (Spain), Einaudi (Italy), Serpent’s Tail (United Kingdom), Seuil (France) and Suhrkamp (Germany). His novel Moral Sciences was awarded the XXV Herralde Novel Prize, an achievement which solidified his place among the most important writers on the current international literary scene.

«Kohan has a gift for writing absolutely natural dialogue. His prose is light and elegant with a precisely calibrated rhythm. His words are measured and true. An impeccable writer.»

Ernesto Calabuig, EL MUNDO


«Hypnotic prose. A writer in complete command of his style and literary universe; a writer of unquestionable power.»

Ricardo Baixeras, EL PERIÓDICO

«The prose of the Argentine writer Martín Kohan, especially in his most recent books, is one of clinical precision and cool distance. But each novel has an effect unto itself.»

Edmundo Paz Soldán


«A writer now safely berthed in the dock of talent.»

Ricardo Menéndez Salmón

Fotografia del autor

© Daniel Mordzinski

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By Martín Kohan

  • Hello? A Requiem for the Telephone

    ESSAY, 2022

      These days, the telephone feels almost obsolete. It used to be the primary means by which people communicated, and that was its sole purpose, but now it has mutated (from ‘land...

  • Sleepless Summer Nights

    SHORT STORIES, 2021

    The atmosphere of the stories featured in this collection is defined by a single phenomenon: the summer heat, which bears down oppressively on the villages and small towns where they're set,...

  • Me acuerdo

    NARRATIVE, 2020

  • Confession

    NOVEL, 2020

    A brutally gripping novel set during the Argentine dictatorship. Three stories come together to form a whole. In 1941, in a provincial town in Argentina, a girl confesses her first sexual...

  • 1917

    ESSAY, 2017

  • Out of Place

    NOVEL, 2016

    Fuera de lugar (Out of Place) takes place in different locations: the Andean foothills, the shore of the Rio de la Plata, the urban sprawl of Greater Buenos Aires, the Far East and a border. And...

  • Cuerpo a tierra

    SHORT STORIES, 2015.

  • Tales of love in popular culture

    ESSAY, 2015

    "Emptying a song of its music seems very similar to the practice of oceanographers who measure tides through a series of calculations based on the supposition that there are seven moons. The...

  • El país de la guerra

    POLITICAL ESSAY, 2014

  • White Bay

    NOVEL, 2012

    Martín Kohan's latest book is a surprising anti-novel; a contemporary take on Crime and Punishment with an ironic portrayal of murder and guilt.  Mario Novoa, an Argentinian...

  • Unfinished Business

    NOVEL, 2010

    In Unfinished Business a wretched person worthy of compassion, the daily portrait of a pitiful life, one solicitous of sympathy, and the gaze of a cruel and resentful narrator that has pity for...

  • Urban Zone

    NON FICTION, 2007

    Paris is without a doubt the central city in the critical work of Walter Benjamin. But it is also possible to displace the city and make it the vertex of a figure made up of three places: Berlin,...

  • Moral Sciences

    NOVEL, 2007

    WINNER OF THE XXV HERRALDE NOVEL PRIZE Moral Sciences takes place in an elite and traditional school in Buenos Aires at the beginning of the 1980s, during the final phase of the Argentine...

  • Museum of the Revolution

    NOVEL, 2006

    This novel could hardly be called traditional. With masked irony it answers the question “Can society be changed?” Here the conventions and foolishness of the notion of progress...

  • Seconds Out

    NOVEL, 2006

    New York, 1923, the Argentine Luis Angel Firpo, called the Wild Bull of the Pampas, knocks out of the ring the American Jack Dempsey, heavyweight champion of the world. In Buenos Aires, the match...

  • Writing San Martín

    NON FICTION, 2005

    What aspects must a life contain, and how should that life be retold, for that person to become a revered national hero? This book is a critical study of the ways in which the canon of...

  • Twice in June

    NOVEL, 2002

     This novel finds just the right voice and voices - including murmurs, reverberations and echoes - to conjure a specific period without self-pity, equivocation or compassion. This is no...

  • Los cautivos

    NOVEL, 2000

  • El informe

    NOVEL, 1997

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