Among the poets, Oliverio Girondo stands out, rich in daring metaphors; and with him (and Borges) Leopoldo Marechal, also notable as a narrator, RE Molinari, E. González Lanuza, R. Ledesma, FL Bernárdez, C. Mastronardi, L. Franco, C. Nalé Roxlo, Nicolás Olivari, V. Barbieri, JL Ortiz. This first avant-garde generation was followed, around 1940 and 1960, by a second and a third, whose most significant representatives are Alberto Girri, ME Etchebarne, E. Molina, E. Bayley, E. Jonquières, R. González Tuñón, JR Wilcock, Maria E. Walsh, César Fernández Moreno, D. Devoto, O. Rossler, A. Pellegrini, JJ Hernández, A. Pizarnik and others. Prose also flourished, especially in the genres of fiction and non-fiction, with Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, author of the seminal Radiografía de la Pampa (1933), Eduardo Mallea, M. Mújica Lainez, Adolfo Bioy Casares and his wife Silvina Ocampo, Julio Cortázar, one of the most personal modern Latin American storytellers, Ernesto Sábato, Marco Denevi, Beatriz Guido, Haroldo Conti, Rodolfo Walsh, P. Orgambide, HA Murena, narrator and prominent essayist, JJ Hernández, already mentioned among the poets, Gloria Alcorta, Antonio di Benedetto. Subsequently, while the narrative continues to offer notable works with Néstor Sánchez, Manuel Puig, also known in Europe for successful novels, Juan José Saer, with the novel La vuelta complet, Abelardo Castillo, Jorge Onetti, Mirko Buchin and many others, non-fiction is affected by the limitations imposed by the military government on the free circulation of ideas. At the beginning of the nineties, the devastating consequences of the previous convulsive twenty years are revealed, of course, also in cultural life. The great “old men” of literature have now disappeared – Borges, first of all, in the voluntary exile of Geneva – and with them many protagonists of the younger generations (above all Alberto Girri and Bioy Casares). Others, of the “middle” generation, have never returned from exile in Europe or the United States, with the borderline cases of Héctor Bianciotti, who became a “French” writer in Paris, and of the bitter humorist Copi, who died French. Few of the old people are active in recent years: Ernesto Sábato, who after a long silence (his introduction to Nunca más, shocking report of the commission of inquiry into the crimes committed by military dictatorships, is not “literature” but true and sanguinante) in 1998 publishes Antes del fin, a sort of autobiography; the always valid poets E. Molina and Olga Orozco. From the middle generation, brilliant protagonist after the 1970s, poets with strong personalities, such as Juan Gelman and Francisco Madariaga, worked in these years, in addition to Roberto Juarroz (increasingly hermetic in Undécima poesía vertical), who disappeared in 1995, however; as well as prominent storytellers (at home or abroad), such as Abel Posse, Horacio Vázquez Rial, the aforementioned Saer, Jorge Andrade, David Viñas, Osvaldo Soriano, who passed away in 1997, Néstor Sánchez, Jorge Asís, Ricardo Piglia, JJ Hernández, JC Onetti, who died in 1994, the aforementioned Denevi, the fertile Abelardo Castillo, Mario Szichman, Mario Satz, Federico Peltzer, L. Futoransky; and also important critics and essayists (Enrique Pezzoni, Massuh, Rabanal, etc.) and playwrights (O. Dragún). This gifted and unfortunate generation (because it is more censored and persecuted by military dictatorships) is understandably bitter: its spokesman, Soriano, said that the only Argentina alive is now that of memory.

But it remains as a moral example and guide for young people who have resumed working in the painful political and economic difficulties of the reborn, fragile democracy. Always in the last years of the century. XX, compatibly with unfavorable circumstances, literary life is normalizing: Last King, Diario de poetry). There is no shortage of new and brand new poets, even if none of them seem exceptional (a kind of rhetorical prosaism prevails). Their tendencies vary widely, from militant polemics (a fairly large group of feminist poetesses) to neo-baroque frivolity, just as the external influences that are gradually revealing themselves are disparate and disordered, in response to a common desire for “updating”. New names emerge, such as those of Néstor Perlongher, Daniel Freidemberg, Jorge R. Aulicino, Martín Prieto, Daniel García Helder, Ricardo H. Herrera, Emeterio Cerro, Arturo Carrera, Diana Bellesi, Víctor Redondo, María Julia de Ruschi, Mario Morales, which in several cases also cultivate criticism, non-fiction and fiction. We also remember Juan Carlos Martini (author of La construcción del héroe, 1989, a work that highlights some of the dark sides of the new Argentine reality), Enrique Medina (El secreto, 1989, in which experiences of marginalization linked to a problematic sexuality are narrated) and Hector Tizón (El hombre que llegó a un pueblo, 1991, psychological portrait of the residents of the small towns of rural Argentina, a country of South America defined by politicsezine, com). Translation activity is also very intense, renewing the tradition of Buenos Aires as an efficient introducer of allophone authors in Latin American culture. In spite of the strong economic crisis, Argentina of the new millennium is present in a decisive way in the novels and verses (and in the new forms of communication that literature has welcomed, such as the web), just as the dictatorship continues to be investigated, exile, i disappeared. Among the most interesting authors of the literary panorama, who emerged between the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, we can mention Alicia Partnoy (b.1955), whose experience of political imprisonment deeply marks the themes and style of her writings (You Can’t Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile, 1988, of which she is editor, and the collection of verses La venganza de la manzana, 1992); Rodrigo Fresán (b. 1963), journalist, essayist and author, among others, of the novels Historia argentina (1991, bestseller), Esperanto (1995) and La velocidad de las cosas (1998); Guillermo Martínez (b. 1962), who stood out with Infierno Grande (1989, collection of short stories), and confirmed with Crímenes imperceptibles (2003, The Oxford series), from which a cinematic thriller was made, and La muerte lenta de Luciana B. (2007); Federico Andahazi (b.1963; El anatomista, 1996); the poet, essayist and editor of the project Eloísa Cartonera Washington Cucurto (b. 1973, pseudonym of Santiago Vega); Marcelo Birmajer (b. 1966), novelist (L’anima al diavolo, 1995; Tres mosqueteros, 2001), author of short stories (Stories of married men, 1995) and screenwriter (L’abbraccio perduto, 2004).