Argentina

Doppelgangers galore: The Novices of Lerna, by Angel Bonomini, reviewed

9 November 2024 9:00 am

A graduate from Argentina, offered a six-month fellowship in Switzerland, is appalled to meet – and have to live with - 24 versions of himself

Does bitcoin fit the definition of good money?

10 August 2024 9:00 am

Three philosophers readily acknowledge the cryptocurrency’s shortcomings, but emphasise its one important function – as a means of challenging autocratic regimes

A football chant is causing problems for Javier Milei

24 July 2024 6:03 pm

When the final whistle blew and Argentina’s players celebrated another Copa America triumph – the icing on the cake of…

Javier Milei is torn between the West and China

15 May 2024 12:20 am

Javier Milei pledged to ‘make Argentina great again’ when he took to the stage in February at the CPAC meeting…

Javier Milei’s radical reforms could start to heal Argentina’s economy

17 December 2023 10:46 pm

Argentina has spent most of its 200-year history in deficit; no other country currently owes the International Monetary Fund a…

40 years on, war still casts a shadow over the Falklands

2 April 2022 9:00 am

Life on the Falklands, 40 years on

An ill wind in Buenos Aires: Portrait of Unknown Lady, by María Gainza, reviewed

12 March 2022 9:00 am

How to review a book that pokes fun at critics? When the protagonist of María Gainza’s Portrait of an Unknown…

How Argentina conquered Malbec

30 January 2021 9:00 am

When Napoleon III proclaimed himself Emperor of France in 1852, he unwittingly kickstarted quality wine production in Chile and Argentina.…

pope

The Pope really doesn’t like Republicans

1 November 2020 9:16 am

Last week we learned that Pope Francis has torn up the Catholic Church’s teaching that same-sex civil partnerships are gravely…

Is Lionel Messi the greatest footballer of all time?

8 December 2018 9:00 am

If you don’t know who Lionel Messi is you won’t enjoy this book much. If you do, you probably will.…

Portrait of the reader as devoted book-owner: Alberto Manguel in happier days, at home in his library in France

Packing away my 35,000 books was like writing my own obituary

14 April 2018 9:00 am

Alberto Manguel is a kind of global Reader Laureate: he is reading’s champion, its keenest student and most zealous proselytiser,…

César Aira returns to the evocative small-town landscape of his youth

17 February 2018 9:00 am

The publication of César Aira’s The Lime Tree in Chris Andrews’s assured translation is a reminder that much of the…

Voices of exile

15 July 2017 9:00 am

During the military dictatorships of the 1970s, exile for many Latin American writers was not so much a state of…

Portrait of the week

2 April 2016 9:00 am

Home The Indian company Tata decided to sell its entire steel business in Britain, putting more than 15,000 jobs in…

Rodolfo González Alcántara is lord of the dance

9 January 2016 9:00 am

‘Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough,’ said Gustave Flaubert. He might have been talking about this…

Sorry, America, but it looks like Joe Biden is your next president

10 October 2015 9:00 am

I have a sinking feeling that Joe Biden might be the next president of the United States. In a brilliant…

Acer palmatum ‘Osakasuki’, the Japanese maple

There is good in every tree, says Thomas Pakenham — even the sycamore

26 September 2015 8:00 am

I have never written much about the one-acre shaw of native trees I planted in 1994, even though it is…

Peru's Indians are repressed with more efficiency than blacks ever were in South Africa

4 April 2015 9:00 am

In The Spectator of 21 March a column by Toby Young caught my eye. Discussing the pros and cons of…

Portrait of the week

14 March 2015 9:00 am

Home Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said that ‘a huge burden of responsibility’ lay with those who acted as apologists…

Oh joy! Sean Penn has tried to crack a joke

28 February 2015 9:00 am

What a pleasure it is to see the Hollywood actor Sean Penn neck deep in PC ordure. The rodentine thespian…

I’ll take Jeremy Clarkson over a howling mob any day

1 November 2014 9:00 am

Perhaps it’s a glaring and personal flaw in my observational skills, but if somebody tried to insult me via a…

Doctor in the house: Alex Brendemühl as Josef Mengele

Allergic to blockbusters? See Wakolda

9 August 2014 9:00 am

Wakolda is not a sunny film for a sunny day, just so you’re aware, but as there is so little…