Says Michi Strausfeldthe german editor that opened the doors of Europe to latin american literature back in the 60s, which is equivalent to saying back in the boom years, that the first time he read One hundred years of lonelinessof Gabriel Garcia Marquez, used a Spanish dictionary because he didn’t master the language. “I understood half”, remember. He also says that Julio Cortazar “He lived modestly, he enjoyed an Argentine steak, a good wine, whiskey and a pipe.” He writes this in his beautiful book Yellow butterflies and the dictator lords: Latin America tells its story (Debate). The above, sitting in the armchairs of a central hotel in Buenos Aires, where she spoke with Clarín Culture days before presenting his work at the 48th Book Fair.
Strausfeld is one of the main boom gears although she unceremoniously rejects that role. If the Catalan agent Carmen Balcells was the best architect of that generation of authors in the European publishing market, Michi put the key in the doors of the heart of the old continent: in Germany. But that is not the story that is told in his book. The mere mention of the words “memoirs” makes her jump (“I’m not that important,” she dismisses with a wave of her hand).
Yellow butterflies and the dictator lords It is, as the subtitle announces, a tour of the history of Latin America from the prism of its narrative. For this editor, who brought German readers closer to authors like Isabel Allende and Osvaldo Soriano, everything is in fiction. So she opened her archive, she browsed the reading reports she produced for 33 years for the publisher. Suhrkamp and, of those more than 350 analyses, extracted DNA from a region with whom he fell in love as a teenager thanks to a television documentary.
In 2009, Michi Strausfeld received the Order of Isabella the Catholic for his work in the dissemination of Hispanic literature in Germany. In 2012 she was chosen by the Buenos Aires Book Fair as one of the fifty most important personalities of Latin American culture and in 2015 he received the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise for her work as an editor of children’s and young people’s books. Today, she wears green, she is sparkling in her response and exhibits an agile sense of humor, in discreet ways.
–It says in the book that at the beginning of everything, there was a documentary about Machu Picchu. What did that film generate in the girl you were then?
–I was 14 years old, maybe 13, and the question about those broken stones that caught my attention is valid. In truth, as a child in the 1950s I had already seen the first part of that production by Hans Domnick, Panamericana: Dream Highway, which ranged from Alaska to the ruins of the Aztecs and Mayans in Mexico and Guatemala. The second part, already in 1962, began in Colombia and then traveled through the south making some twists and turns to finish in Brazil. There was Machu Picchu and it was clear to me from the beginning: “I have to know that”, I told myself. Five years later and as a student, I got a university scholarship to go to Peru for three months. We were a group and we had to work six weeks before to raise the money and spend another six weeks there. There I met Machu Picchu. It was 1967 and in Germany there was no Latin American literature at all. But In Peru, everyone was talking to me about a novel titled One hundred years of loneliness. I bought it and read it with a dictionary. I didn’t understand even half of it. My Spanish was very poor at that time and, even so, the magic arrived. When I returned, I asked myself why continue studying English and French literature and if there was something new here, that no one knew about and that was much more interesting, shocking. I wanted to write my master’s thesis on Latin American literature, but my professor replied that it was a very good idea, but since he didn’t know anything about the subject, it wasn’t going to be possible. However, I was able to write my doctoral thesis on the new Latin American novel and One hundred years of loneliness.
–What was known about Latin America then?
-Nothing. Nothing. That he had been discovered by Columbus, that at some point they had become independent, without further details, and finally that Fidel Castro was in Cuba.
–Is the situation different now?
-Today much more is actually known. The situation in Nicaragua, where the Germans were heavily involved during the revolution, helped make the region visible. And also literature, which for 30 years was not only fashionable but influential and important. While the death of literature was declared in Germany and Europe, Latin Americans narrated as they pleased. And it was very complicated to introduce all that. That was my job as an editor. And there were two kinds of difficulties: on the one hand, we didn’t have translators sufficient and, on the other hand, people became fixated on the clichés of magical realism and contradicting them (Cortázar is not magical realism, nor is Onetti) was difficult. But those books conquered readers in Germany and that was very nice. Then they gave Gabo the Nobel Prize and then Isabel Allende swept it with The House of the Spirits.
People became fixed on the clichés of magical realism and contradicting them (Cortázar is not magical realism, nor is Onetti) was difficult.
–Did Latin American literature influence German literature in any way?
-I really do not know. They were interested, they read them and there are some German authors who say that some authors and some books have impacted them. Currently, all that has diminished a lot. Today we are once again in a situation in which Latin America is not of much interest, neither politically nor literary. And when we talk about authors, they respond that they already know magical realism.
–What happens with the Latin American authors who are being translated in Europe, who are identified as a new boom?
–Those things are said here but not in Germany. In the case of Claudia Pineirohis books are selling a lot in Germany because uses detective novels as a pretext to talk about society and what is happening here. He seems very skillful to me and I like this. Other authors that I like are Almada Jungle (I hope he will receive the Booker Prize), too Monica Ojeda in Ecuador, but there are also in Bolivia and Mexico. But everything is very minor. Germany has been very involved in the reality of the eastern countries for a long time and now even more so with the war in Ukraine.
–Your book is a political reading of the continent but from literature. Why do you think literature is a valid platform to learn about history?
–I always say that through books, one understands what is happening in societies. And through books, one can build bridges of understanding. But it is something that costs. In the book, I start with Christopher Columbus and end with the young authors of today, but to build this review of the eras I only cite authors from Latin America (about 150) because what I want is to give the vision of how you yourselves see his own continent. For example, why is there no canonical Mexican novel about Hernán Cortés? Or why is there no canonical Peruvian novel about Pizarro? All this attracts attention. AND In the case of Argentina, nobody understands Peronismbut when I realized that Argentine writers didn’t understand it either, I felt better.
I always seek to understand. Now, I want to understand why interest in Europe in Latin America and Germany has fallen.
–Are you still reading Latin American literature?
–I try to follow, more or less, what is happening. But I’m not as informed as I was before., especially after Yellow Butterflies and the Dictators, I have published another small book called A New World of Flavors: The Exuberant Kitchens of Mexico, Peru and Brazil, which is the result of the pandemic. And now I am dedicated to other research on the cultural relations of Germany and Latin America. I always seek to understand. Now, I want to understand why interest in Europe in Latin America and Germany has fallen.
–Is there another generation of editors who follow in your footsteps?
–Yes, there are a few, but they have fewer possibilities because the confluence that I had in Suhrkamp is not so common. After the success of Isabel Allende, my boss Siegfried Unseld let me publish one unknown author a year. So, We published about ten Latin American books a year. I have also had the immense fortune to meet great authors, her friend, her confidant, and to take care of her work. The love that they have given me from Alejo Carpentier to Juan Rulfo is something beautiful and some of that is interspersed in the book in the chapters in which I tell some memories. Everyone asks me for my memories and there are none. Whoever wants to know them can read only those 16 texts about the authors.
Michi Strausfeld. Photos: Ariel Grinberg.–Why don’t you want to write memoirs?
–I’m not that important. And what I want is to create even more bridges.
Michi Strausfeld will present on Friday at 5:30 p.m., Yellow butterflies and the dictators. Latin America tells its story together with Sergio Olguín and Patricia Kolesnicov in the Alejandra Pizarnik room.
