Among the quartet of Authors of the Day featured at this year's London Book Fair is Argentine novelist Claudia Piñeiro. Best known for her socially astute crime fiction, Piñeiro's books are bestsellers in Argentina, and her 2007 novel Elena Knows, published in an English translation in 2021 by the Edinburgh-based Charco Press, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. Her 10 novels have been translated into multiple languages, including six in English, and adapted into feature films. She is also the author of several books for young readers, and the recipient of such literary prizes as Germany's LiBeratur Award and the Guadalajara International Book Fair's Sort Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize. PW talked with Piñeiro ahead of this year’s London Book Fair.

How are you feeling about your Author of the Day role?

It’s an honor and a pleasure. For the London Book Fair to assign me this role really is a privilege. I hope that being here will help my books to reach new readers and publishers in other languages. And that Andrea Kidd and I will have a good chat about literature.

What is your experience with book fairs, and how do you see their role in the literary landscape overall?

I’ve been to fairs of all different kinds. Naturally, the Buenos Aires Book Fair is one of my favorites, because it is focused on readers. It lasts for several days and brings together a lot of people. It is a real party. The Guadalajara fair is probably the most important one [in Latin America], the largest and busiest, with a charm all its own, where as well as readers you meet a lot of friends and colleagues. It is a lot of fun, a celebration.

I’ve also been to fairs in Bogotá, Cali, Lima, Guayaquil, Santiago de Chile, Rio de Janeiro, and the Zócalo in Mexico City. Each of them has their own particular characteristics and delights. Outside of Latin America I’ve been to Frankfurt a number of times, to Krakow, to Sopot, and to Cairo. These are unforgettable experiences, even when they are fairs more focused on doing business. There is always something to learn.

Your novels are bestsellers in Argentina, have been translated into many languages, and one was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. How does it feel for your work to be read and well received in different parts of the world? Do you ever feel pressure to be a kind of ambassador?

It is enormously satisfying to know I have so many readers. Also, knowing that my books can be read on multiple levels: one reader might find their way to it on one level, and another at a different level. I think that’s why a book can be treated as literary fiction and wind up a finalist for the Booker while another reader can enjoy it for the suspense or intrigue, or to follow the journey of one of the characters.

There are quite a few of us women writers from Argentina traveling the world to faraway book fairs, so in any case I am part of a group. Today my country is receiving attention for political reasons: constriction of rights, violence against culture, against women, against LGBTQ+ groups, against universities, attacks on individual artists. It weighs on me to have to talk about these things rather than the literature of my country, because the historical moment we are living through is a very troubling one.

I’m a female Latin American writer and I’m very aware of where I’m writing from—a place that is far from the heart of power, whether geopolitical or literary. I think that for this reason, so many women authors from the region have come to prominence in recent years—because we are writing from the margins, as Deleuze says, a minor literature: “writing like a dog digging a hole,” with that kind of determination. Minor because we are not at the center of power. We do it almost like a survival instinct.

How do you understand the purpose and value of literature in translation, both as a writer and as a reader?

In Argentina, we read a great deal of literature in translation. Borges and [Adolfo] Bioy Casares had an imprint, Séptimo Círculo, which published both the best of British detective fiction and the best of Latin American noir. The first translation into Spanish of the Nobel Prize winner Han Kang was thanks to an Argentinian publisher. The Norma publishing house has a collection of the works of Shakespeare translated by Argentina’s greatest writers. We grew up with books translated from English, French, Japanese, Russian, and so many others. For me, it’s impossible to imagine reading, and becoming the writer I am, without these translations.

Which contemporary writers inspire or challenge you?

The Korean Han Kang has moved me a great deal this year, especially her book Human Acts. The Greek-Swedish writer Theodor Kallifatides. From Ireland, Claire Keegan. The French writer Violaine Bérot. In Latin America, to name just a few: Eduardo Halfon, Samanta Schweblin, Dolores Reyes, Selva Almada, Carla Madeira, Pilar Quintana, Julián López, Alejandro Zambra. There are many others I could mention, I read a lot of contemporary literature.