Marcelo Cohen is an Argentine writer, translator and literary critic. He has managed to create his own literary territory, marked by a slight strangeness in customs and technological environment that makes us think of a parallel and close world in the future. He has published twelve novels, six story collections, and four essay books. Marcelo Cohen was born in Buenos Aires in 1951, studied letters at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires but did not finish his degree. At the end of 1975, he traveled to Spain, and decided to stay there because of the political climate in Argentina. During his long stay in Barcelona he was editor-in-chief of the cultural magazine El viejo topo. He has published reviews and articles in prestigious newspapers such as El País (Madrid) and La Vanguardia (Barcelona), as well as Clarín and Página 30 magazine in Buenos Aires. He directed an edition of the complete works of Shakespeare translated by Ibero-American writers, and is co-director of the literary and arts magazine Otra parte. He has translated over one hundred literature and essay books from English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Catalan. His translations include, among others, works by Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Jane Austen, Henry James, T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, A.R. Ammons, Wallace Stevens, Scott Fitzgerald, J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs, Italo Svevo, Raymond Roussel, Machado de Assis and Clarice Lispector. Cohen’s unusual prose has earned him the 2004 Konex Award: Novela Quinquenio 1999-2003 and the Critics’ Award for his novel Balada (2011).
