Zama

Antonio Di Benedetto (1922–1986) was born in Mendoza, Argentina. He began his career as a journalist, writing for the Mendoza paper Los Andes. In 1953 he published his first book, a collection of short stories titled Mundo Animal. Zama was his first novel, followed by El Silenciero, Los Suicidas, and Sonbras, Nada Más. Over the course of his career, he received numerous honors, including a 1975 Guggenheim Fellowship and decorations from the French and Italian governments, and he earned the admiration of such well-known writers as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, and Roberto Bolaño. In 1976 Di Benedetto was imprisoned and tortured by Argentina’s military dictatorship. After his release in 1977, he went into exile in Spain. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1984 and died less than two years later.

Armando Durán has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the resident acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2009 he was named by AudioFile as Best Voice in Biography and History for his narration of Che Guevara. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon.

Esther Allen is an essayist and translator from Spanish and French. Among her translations are Horacio Verbitsky’s The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior, José Marti: Selected Writings, and José Manuel Prieto’s Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia. The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded her two translation fellowships, one of them for Zama, and the French government has named her a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and at Baruch College.