Elsa Osorio

Elsa Osorio, 2014.

Elsa Osorio (* 1952 in Buenos Aires ) is an Argentine writer and author.

Life

Elsa Osorio studied literature to become a teacher at the university in her hometown. Her literary debut, the book of short stories Ritos Privados , was awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura, Argentina's most important literary prize, in 1982. For Reina Mugra , she was awarded the Premio Sociedad Argentina de Escritores in 1990. In 1991 she and Beatriz Guido: Mentir la verdad presented a biographical novel about the Argentine writer Beatriz Guido . Further publications followed with Como tenerlo todo (1993) a humorous book, a parody of self-help books and Las Malas lenguas (1994). In 1994 Osorio left Argentina and lived in Madrid for many years .

In 2000, Mein Name ist Luz ( A veinte años, Luz , 1998) was her first book in German translation. In it, Elsa Osorio describes a young woman's attempt to gain certainty about her own origins, thus addressing the issue of forced adoption in authoritarian regimes. During the Argentine military dictatorship , children born in custody were systematically robbed by junta opponents, whose further fate remained in many cases unexplained, and given to officer's families loyal to the regime. The publication of My Name is Luz at the end of the 1990s gave impetus to further research into the children of the " disappeared ", also beyond the borders of Argentina. The novel, which has been translated into more than fifteen languages, made Osorio famous in Europe. My name is Luz was awarded the 2001 Amnesty International Literature Prize, which was awarded for the first time on the 40th anniversary of the human rights organization.

After Osorio had already dealt with the phenomenon of tango in 1997 in the script for La lección de tango , she traced the history of Argentine dance in the novel Im Himmel Tango ( Cielo de Tango , 2006) . Based on the life paths of two families of different social status, she tells of their connection with tango on different temporal levels, and at the same time the history of the country since the end of the 19th century. In 2010, the German edition of the volume of short stories Callejón con salida was published under the title Sackgasse mit Ende .

Elsa Osorio also works as a journalist, lecturer and screenwriter for film and television. In 1992 she received the award for best screenplay for the comedy Ya no hay hombres . Since 2006 Osorio has been living mainly in Buenos Aires again.

Works in German translation

• My name is luz. Novel. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-458-17031-6 .
• Tango in heaven. Novel. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-458-17338-0 .
• Dead end with exit. Stories. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-46191-4 .
• The Capitana. Novel. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-458-17517-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Elsa Osorio in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography and reviews of works by Elsa Osorio at perlentaucher.de
• Short biography on the website of Suhrkamp Verlag
• Biography of Elsa Osorios at the Berlin International Literature Festival