Kaufmann, Paola 1969–2006

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Kaufmann, Paola 1969–2006

(Paola Yannielli)

PERSONAL:

Original name Paola Yannielli; used name Paola Kaufmann for literary work; born March 8, 1969, in General Roca, Argentina; died of brain cancer, September 23, 2006, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Education: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ph.D. (neurosciences), 1999; Smith College, Ph.D. (physics), 2003.

CAREER:

Neuroscientist and writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fondo Nacional de las Artes Prize, 2000, for The Devil's Golf Course; Casa de las Americas literary prize, 2003, for The Sister; Planeta Prize for fiction, 2005, for The Lake.

WRITINGS:

La hermana (novel), Editorial Sudamericana (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 2003, translation by William Rowlandson published as The Sister: A Novel on the Hidden World of Emily Dickinson, Alma Books (Richmond, Surrey, England), 2006.

El lago (novel), Planeta (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 2005, published as The Lake, Alma Books (Richmond, Surrey, England), 2007.

El campo de golf del diablo: cuentos (short stories; title means ‘The Devil's Golf Course"), Suma de Letras Argentina (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Paola Kaufmann, considered one of the most promising of twenty-first century Latin American writers, was a neuroscientist who won several awards for her short stories and novels. She is perhaps best known in the English-speaking world for her novel La hermana, translated by William Rowlandson as The Sister: A Novel on the Hidden World of Emily Dickinson. Based on extensive research that Kaufmann conducted while a postdoctoral student at Smith College in Dickinson's native town of Northampton, Massachusetts, the book explores the poet's life from the perspective of her younger sister, Lavinia (who was known as ‘Vinnie"). As Kaufmann explained in an interview with Rowlandson published on the Alma Books Web site, she was drawn to Vinnie because she appeared to be a modest, unexceptional woman yet she had been ‘essential for the poet, [because] she was her connection with the outside world.’ The fact that Emily Dickinson was able to rebel against the norms of her time—which expected women to marry and give their lives to domestic concerns—and instead devote herself to her writing, was possible, in Kaufmann's view, only because of the help of Vinnie, who ‘lived an essentially parallel life … and who was the lifeline to the outside world.’ Kaufmann commented further that she wanted to depict Emily as ‘vital, rebellious, mad, intimate, genius, troubled. An Emily in movement. An Emily who resists sharp focus.’ Kaufmann noted that ‘that is where Lavinia appears, in the periphery.’ As Kaufmann observed, ‘My world-view includes, amongst other things, the vision of Lavinia Dickinson—oblique, sideways, critical, yet at the same time loving and protective."

In a review of The Sister for the Austin Chronicle, Sofia Resnick described the novel as an ‘engaging, delicately scripted story’ that shows Kaufmann's 'determination to tell the truth but tell it slant’ (an allusion to Dickinson's poem ‘Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant"). A contributor to Kirkus Reviews found Kaufmann's non-chronological narrative ‘illogical,’ but admired the sensitive way in which it ‘captures the dark, secretive nature of [its] thorny New England characters.’ Hailing The Sister as an ‘engaging’ novel, a Publishers Weekly reviewer deemed it a ‘must-read for Dickinson fans.’ The book won the Casa de las Americas literary prize in 2003.

Kaufmann's collection of short stories, El campo de golf del diablo: cuentos ("The Devil's Golf Course: Stories"), won the Fondo Nacional de las Artes Prize in 2000. Another novel, El lago ("The Lake"), was awarded the Planeta Prize for fiction in 2005. The novel, inspired in part by the search for the Loch Ness monster in Scotland, concerns a fictional scientific expedition in Argentina during that country's military dictatorship in the 1970s. Ana, the protagonist, leads a team that is trying to find a mythical lake monster in Argentina's remote region of Patagonia. What she finds, however, are monsters and brutality of a different kind—and which touch on her own family history.

Kaufmann died in Buenos Aires in 2006 at age thirty-seven, shortly after being diagnosed with brain cancer.