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He was born in Argentina, raised in Sweden and trained between Buenos Aires, London and New York, where he arrived 25 years ago to do a doctorate in comparative literature and attend Jacques Derrida's seminars. Today, cured of the virus of theory and the "intentional darkness" of academic writing, Hernán Díaz (1973) lives in Brooklyn, is a professor at Columbia and directs the Revista Hispánica Moderna of the Hispanic Institute, the former Institute of the Spains founded at the New York university 103 years ago. And he is also a successful writer in his favorite language of creation, which is English. With his first novel, A lo lejos, published in Spain by Impedimenta, he was a Pulitzer finalist in 2018. Now he presents Fortuna (Anagrama), received in the United States as one of the best books of 2022.

If A lo lejos was a primitive western in a territory yet to be adjudicated, without cows or cowboys or guns, Fortuna approaches another American founding myth, that of great financial capitalism, deployed in that city made of money called New York before and after the crash of 29. "Looking at both novels together it is evident that there is a continuity of interests, the examination of certain American stereotypes, but there is no plan.

It all started with an emotional texture, and in both cases it was loneliness," explains Díaz, vigorous and cordial despite jet lag, at his hotel in Madrid. "I wrote my thesis on isolation in modern literature, and it's a topic that continues to interest me. We are all deeply alone and at the same time try to touch the world and touch others. That constant attempt at communion, to be part of something that is not us, is a form of intimate and silent epic that moves me. I find it miraculous and tragic... And sorry if that was a little intense," he hastens to apologize.

The two protagonists of Fortuna – Andrew Bevel, the impassive heir of a dynasty of financiers, and Mildred, the prodigy daughter of a well-fated Albany family – represent two particular forms of solitude that are reconciled and complement each other in a singular marriage. Of their affective and power relationship, Fortuna gives up to four successive versions, written by four different authors: a novel inspired by both; Arthur Bevel's account of refutation of the novel from a talented young secretary after the death of his wife; the version of the secretary, converted over the years into a prestigious writer; and the diary of Mildred's last days.

Four texts that overlap, complement and contradict each other and whose differentiated authorship the writer has been rigorously raised. To the point that, to make sure to erase all traces of his own writing, he wrote four different style manuals, with specific instructions that when the time came he has shared with the translators of the work: in the Spanish case, the writer Javier Calvo.

"I wanted to erase my presence and make each of these fictional voices as believable as possible," he says. An unusual exercise among today's writers. "For some years we have been living a confessional turn in fiction, with the first person in the foreground. I'm not saying it's wrong, but in terms of the presence of the self I'm at a diametrically opposite pole," he clarifies.

Díaz claims in Fortuna the role of women, traditionally absent or subsidiary in the narratives of great fortunes: "I wanted to examine that absence and question the myth of the self-made man, who is always a man." And in his clinical exposition of the implacable mechanisms of financial capitalism, an implicit questioning of the American philanthropic model appears.

"Patronage has a long history, but in more contemporary times philanthropy is a form of moral greed. Once you have satisfied all your other appetites, that you have accumulated all the riches you wanted, the last luxury good to buy is a good conscience. I find it suspicious, although paradoxically I have benefited from it. This same novel has been written with the help of several foundations. But I would be much happier if these people, instead of choosing their projects for their own vanity, paid their taxes like everyone else, and that there was a more equitable system of redistribution."

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