Sara Gallardo Drago Mitre (23 December 1931 – 14 June 1988) was an influential
in Spanish

Argentine Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or (feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, s ...

author and journalist.

Life

Gallardo was born in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

to an

upper class Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status, usually are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is gen ...

family with extensive

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...

property. She became an astute observer and critic of the Argentine

aristocracy Aristocracy (, ) is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocracy (class), aristocrats. The term derives from the el, αριστοκρατία (), meaning 'rule of the best'. At t ...

.Flores, Angel (1992) "Sara Gallardo" ''Spanish American Authors: The Twentieth Century'' H. W, Wilson Company, New York, p. 333, She was

Bartolomé Mitre Bartolomé Mitre Martínez (26 June 1821 – 19 January 1906) was an Argentine statesman, soldier and author. He was President of Argentina from 1862 to 1868 and the first president of unified Argentina. Mitre is known as the most versatile ...

's great-great-granddaughter. She was married twice, first to

Luis Pico Estrada Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...

and then to

H. A. Murena Héctor Alberto Álvarez (1923–1975), better known under his pen name of H. A. Murena, was an Argentina, Argentine writer, essayist, poet, and translator. He wrote over twenty books on various topics, and was an important disseminator of Germa ...

. Gallardo began publishing in 1958. In addition to her numerous newspaper columns and essays, she published five

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

s, a collection of

short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

, several children’s books, and a number of

travelogue Travelogue may refer to: Genres * Travel literature, a record of the experiences of an author travelling * Travel documentary A travel documentary is a documentary film, television program, or online series that describes travel in general or t ...

s. She contributed to the magazines ''Primera Plana'', '' Panorama'' and'' Confirmado'' among others. She is quoted as often saying, "Writing is an absurd and heroic activity." Greatly affected by the death of her second husband in 1975, she moved with her children to La Cumbre, Córdoba Province, to a house provided by the writer

Manuel Mujica Láinez Manuel Mujica LainezIn fact, the writer himself spelled his surnames without accents, as all his books published during his lifetime show. (11 September 1910 – 21 April 1984) was an Argentine novelist, essayist and art critic. He is mainly ...

. Then in 1979, she moved to Barcelona, where she wrote ''La Rosa en el Viento'' (''The Rose in the Wind''), her last book. She continued her travels in Switzerland and Italy, but she did not finish any more works. Upon her return to Argentina she died at age 56 of an asthma attack in Buenos Aires. She left behind notes for a planned biography of the Jewish intellectual and

Carmelite , image = , caption = Coat of arms of the Carmelites , abbreviation = OCarm , formation = Late 12th century , founder = Early hermits of Mount Carmel , founding_location = Mount Car ...

nun,

Edith Stein Edith Stein (religious name Saint Teresia Benedicta a Cruce ; also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross or Saint Edith Stein; 12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942) was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Christianity and became a ...

, who was killed at the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

in 1942.

Works

''Enero'' ("''January ''")(1958) is her first novel. It details the intensely private world of an adolescent farmworker. It is written in a deliberately ambiguous way to reflect the confusion of the main character, who becomes pregnant after being raped. ''El País del Humo'' ("''Land of Smoke''")(1977) is a collection of short stories and literary sketches that show a fantastical side that was more associated with her children’s books. Some of the stories can be described as

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

."Index to Non-English Language Women SF Writers" ''Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy & Utopia''
/ref> Other works include the novels ''Pantalones azules'' (1963), ''Los galgos, los galgos'' (1968), ''Eisejuaz'' (1971) and ''La rosa del viento'' (1979).

Works in English translation

* ''Land of Smoke'' (trans. Jessica Sequeira). Pushkin Press, 2018.

References

External links

*
"Narrativa Breve Completa de Sara Gallardo" La Basica Online
("Short Narrative on the Complete Works of Sara Gallardo") in Spanish

in Spanish

in Spanish {{DEFAULTSORT:Gallardo, Sara 1931 births 1988 deaths Argentine women short story writers Argentine science fiction writers Argentine non-fiction writers Argentine people of Greek descent Argentine women journalists 20th-century Argentine women writers 20th-century Argentine writers Argentine essayists Argentine women novelists Magic realism writers Women science fiction and fantasy writers 20th-century Argentine novelists Argentine women essayists Writers from Buenos Aires 20th-century short story writers 20th-century essayists

Life

Works

Works in English translation

References

Further reading

External links