Martín Kohan

“Interviewer: „Dos veces junio from 2002 is possibly the very first Argentinian novel, where the members of a repressive apparatus of the last dictatorship are given voice, is that right?“ – „In this respect Dos veces junio has at least a single predecessor, a novel called Villa by Luis Gusmán from 1996, which my book also refers to. Neither Villa, nor Dos veces junio work with the repressive discourse, but with a mediator figure. It is not a figure of an ideologist of a repression or a torturer´s voice, in case of Dos veces junio the story is not even told by a doctor, but a subordinate. I believe that I went a step further than Gusmán, as his Villa is a doctor, while Dos veces junio is told by the doctor´s driver. So the torturer is given orders from his superior, a doctor is one step below, who assist the torturer and keeps the prisoner alive, and one more step down is a the doctor´s driver.”

“I didn’t read Eichmann in Jerusalem before I began writing Dos veces junio, and read it by accident, in the middle of writing my novel. I didn’t begin to read Hannah Arendt thinking, well that would help my cause. It was actually the opposite. When I write I try not to read Argentinian literature, while the language and its tone, mainly if I like the book, could also reflect in the tone and register I chose for my text and so I use the time to read political and literary theories. While writing Dos veces junio I opened Eichmann in Jerusalem and thought: this is exactly what I was looking for.”