In this episode of the EUTERPE Podcast, PhD candidate Laura Bak talks to the Argentine writer Alicia Dujovne Ortiz at her home in Paris, the city where she has lived since 1978, when she went into exile from the military dictatorship. As she describes herself, Dujovne Ortiz is an exile by birth, the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of migrants. Her most recent work, Andanzas. Trilogía autobiográfica (Buenos Aires: Equidistancias, 2022), brings together a reworking of El árbol de la gitana (1995) and Las perlas rojas (2005), alongside the publication of “Aguardiente” (2022), a previously unpublished text.

The conversation explores exile and migration as central themes in her life, her work and her autobiographical writing. The discussion touches on the female characters in her work – figures with a divided, conflicted nature who come from elsewhere – and how that division is mirrored in her own experience of writing across countries and languages, in French and Spanish. There is also the theme of ‘returning’ in her autobiographical work: a journey that takes her from Argentina to the edges of Europe, to places lost amidst migration and oblivion – nations that have changed their names or ceased to exist.

The episode transcript can be accessed here.

The English translation of the transcript can be accessed here.

This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective.

The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library.

Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project.

For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/, or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project.

This episode was produced and edited by: Laura Bak

Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over.

Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili, Evangeline Scarpulla,  and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

This episode is also available on SoundCloud.