The Eighth Wonder

“Argentinian writer Kociancich (The Last Days of William Shakespeare), who died in 2022, offers a mesmerizing character study of a lawyer turned writer trying to make sense of his life. Alberto Paradella, 32, wakes up one morning in 1970s Buenos Aires to two strange discoveries: a naked blond woman outside his door, pleading with him to let her in; and a story in the newspaper about an award-winning film he wrote during a dreamlike visit to Berlin, which, he learns from the article, he didn’t receive credit for. The woman finds her clothes in his apartment and he remembers meeting her the day before at a train station, but it’s not clear what happened. He tries to recover his sense of self, having realized that by entering the world of cinema, he’s become “one of those tourists I pity, people who wager their desire to be another on the roulette of foreign circumstance.” A series of flashbacks build to his momentous trip to Berlin, where he sees a woman who looks just like the one who appears at the beginning of the novel. Kociancich guides the reader with a steady hand as the book draws to its dizzying conclusion, and she peppers the narrative with fascinating insights into cinema, which one character calls “the eighth wonder.” This will stay with readers.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Engrossing and delightful.” —Cory Oldweiler, On the Seawall

VLADY KOCIANCICH (1941-2022) was a writer, literary critic, and translator. Alberto Manguel includes her in “that prestigious and select group of essential Argentine writers kept secret.” While Borges taught her to read, Bioy Casares taught her to write, yet her genealogy and approach to the fantastic are uniquely her own. Her influences range from H. G. Wells to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Julio Cortazar.

She is the author of over a dozen books, including:

• Novels:
  • The Eighth Wonder (1982)
  • The Last Days of William Shakespeare (1984)
  • El templo de las mujeres (1996)
• Short Story Collections:
  • Coraje (1971)
  • Cuando leas esta carta (1998)
  • La ronda de los jinetes muertos (1996, finalist for the R mulo Gallegos Prize in 2007)
• Essay Collection:
  • La raza de los nerviosos (2006)

Her translations into Spanish include Joseph Conrad’s The End of the Tether. She also taught at the Complutense University of Madrid and regularly contributed to the newspapers La Naci n and Clarin.

She won awards including the City of Buenos Aires Short Story Prize, the Torrente Ballester Prize, two Konex Foundation and Fondo Nacional de las Artes Jorge Luis Borges Prizes, and the Esteban Echeverria Trajectory Prize.

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