Martín Kohan

“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.”

“As a writer I could refer to a certain tradition, which advises to go further to be able to tell the story from close. Where does the novel Dos veces junio take place? In my quarter. When I was a little boy, until the age of fifteen, my family lived seven blocks away from navy headquarters, one of the neuralgic points of the army junta, a place, where during the past regime people were captured illegally, tortured and even killed. I remember terrible things from that time: there used to be electricity failures, but in our quarter there was never a single failure. And while there were other planned failures elsewhere, I never experienced anything alike in our place. And now we know why: torturers needed constant electricity supply.”