Steimberg, Alicia (1933–)

Alicia Steimberg (b. 1933), Argentine fiction writer, born in Buenos Aires. Her first novel, Mú sicos y relojeros (Musicians and Watchmakers, 1971), was a finalist in two major literary contests. Her second novel, La loca 101 (Insane Prisoner 101, 1973), won the Satiricón de Oro Award from Argentina. In the 1980s she published several novels and a collection of short stories. The short stories are in Como todas las mañanas (1983), and the novels are Su espíritu inocente (1981), which is set in the Buenos Aires of the 1940s, El árbol del placer (1986; The Tree of Pleasures), and Amatista (1989), a humorous erotic novel that portrays the apprenticeship of a serious gentleman in the practice of erotic games. This book came out in the series La Sonrisa Vertical by Tusquets of Barcelona as the result of winning an award as the best erotic novel of the year. That same year she also published Salirse de madre. In 1991 she published a "gastronomic novel" for adolescents, El mundo no es polenta (The World Is Not Humor).

The humor and wit of the female protagonists is an important feature of Steimberg's fiction. Her novel Cuando digo Magdalena (1992; When I Pronounce Magdalena) won the distinguished Premio Planeta Biblioteca del Sur for 1992. It describes the daily life of a group of people confined on a ranch while practicing "mental control," a technique that became popular in Argentina in the 1990s. In 2001, her book Call Me Magdalena was published in English. This was followed by a translation of The Rainforest in 2006.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Saúl Sosnowski, "Alicia Steimberg: Enhebrando pequeñas historias," in Folio: Essays on Foreign Languages and Literatures (1987).

Monica Flori, "Alicia Steimberg and Cecilia Absatz: Dos narradores argentinas" in Chasqui 17 (November 1988): 2, 83-92.

Additional Bibliography

Ferrero, Adrián. "'Creo que segrego feminismo automática porque soy mujer': Entrevista a la narradora Argentina, Alicia Steimberg." Chasqui 34: (May 2005): 65-73.

Flori, Mónica Roy. Streams of Silver: Six Contemporary Women Writers from Argentina. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1995.

                               Magdalena GarcÍa Pinto