Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993) was an Argentine writer, storyteller and poet. She was born in Buenos Aires to a family deeply rooted in Argentine cultural circles. She was the sister of writer and founder of Sur magazine, Victoria Ocampo, wife of the writer Adolfo Bioy Casares and a friend of Jorge Luis Borges. For much of her life, her figure was overshadowed by theirs, but over time she gained recognition as a fundamental author of twentieth century Argentine literature. She has published ten poetry books, three novels and eight books of short narrative, among them The Topless Tower (1986) and Where There’s Love, There’s Hate (1946, co-written with Bioy Casares). Although she gained recognition as a poet, her greatest achievements were in the field of narrative fiction. Her stories express a corrosive criticism of the social conventions of her time and describe a unique, disturbing fantastical atmosphere: a world where strange events overwhelm mundane bourgeois reality, where motives are obscure, and where a great cruelty presides over life. Silvina Ocampo died in Buenos Aires. After her death, unpublished writings by her were found and published in five volumes, between 2006 and 2010.
