Federico Andahazi (born June 6, 1963) is an Argentine writer.
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Federico Andahazi was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at Congreso, a very central neighborhood of the city. He is one of the Argentine authors who have been translated to more languages across the world.
His books were published by the most prestigious publishers companies. In the United States, he has been published by Doubleday, in England by Transworld, in France by Laffont, in Italy by Frassinelli, in China by China Times, in Japan by Kadokawa, in Germany by Krüger and dozens of publishing houses from various countries.
He gave lectures in very prestigious places like the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the University of Moscow, Russia, and the University of Santos Ossa of Antofagasta, Chile]. He also gave talks in Stockholm, London, Paris, Istanbul and other cities of Europe, Latin America and The United States.
He had participated in literary congresses in France, Finland, and several cities in Spain among others. He was invited to numerous book fairs such as Guadalajara, Moscow, Pula, Istanbul, Madrid, Barcelona and, of course Buenos Aires and almost all of Argentina.
He has collaborated with most of major newspapers and magazines in his country: Clarín, La Nación, Perfil, Noticias, Veintitrés, Lamujerdemivida, Brando, V de Vian, etc. And in several publications from Latin America, the United States and Europe, such as Loft from USA, O Independente from Portugal, El Gatopardo and Soho from Colombia, etc.
His work has the recognition of the critical all over the world. His books are the subject of many reviews and studies.
Federico Andahazi is the son of Bela Andahazi, Hungarian poet and psychoanalyst, and Juana Merlín. During his adolescence, he began to read the classical Argentine and universal authors. He used to escape from school, that reflected the oppressive military dictatorship ruler, to meet with friends in bookstores and bars on Corrientes Avenue, emblematic place of Buenos Aires culture. It was at this time when he began writing his first stories. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Psychology (University of Buenos Aires); he practiced the psychoanalysis a few years, while he was working on his short stories. In 1989, he finished his first novel El oficio de los santos, which is still unpublished by decision of the author.
In 1996, he won the First Prize of the Segunda Bienal de Arte Joven de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires with his short story "Almas misericordiosas".
The same year he received the First Prize of the Concurso Anual desde la Gente with his short story "El sueño de los justos". Towards the end of 1996, he awarded the CAMED Prize with the short story "Por encargo".
In 1996, while he was the finalist of Planeta Awards, his novel The Anatomist won the First Prize of the Fundación Fortabat. However, the mentor of the contest, Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, announced her disagreement with the decision of the jury, through a request published in all the newspapers of Buenos Aires, in which she said that the novel “does not contribute to exalt the most high values of the human spirit”. The jury, composed by important writers like María Angélica Bosco, Raúl Castagnino, José María Castiñeira de Dios, María Granata y Eduardo Gudiño Kieffer, was disqualified by the authoritarian attitude of Mrs Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat. After the scandal that the attitude produced, the literary competitions organized by the Fundación Fortabat have not been held again. This unfortunate episode showed that the fusion of art and culture may not be the true objective of the Foundation. Finally, The Anatomist was published by Editorial Planeta in 1997, and was translated into over thirty different languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide.
His second novel, The Merciful Women, was published in 1998. Located in summer of 1816 at Villa Diodati, this book displays a modern and ironic vision of Gothic genre, discovers unsuspected regions of sexuality and immerses the reader in a troubling enigma.
In 1998 the publishing house Temas published a small volume with some of the short stories awarded titled El árbol de las tentaciones. There are three short stories that begin in the same way and they are located in similar settings (the last century Argentina), the stories flow with a strong and elegant prose.
Then, in 2000, he published El príncipe. It is a novel inspired in the tradition of magical realism. Andahazi knew how to create an apocalyptic atmosphere to talk about the excesses of power and manipulation of people’s wills. In 2002, he published El secreto de los flamencos, a masterful novel set at the beginning of the Renaissance. It is about the war by the perfect technical of the painting. The story revolves around the mathematical secret of perspective and the mystery of colors.
The confrontation between the Flemish and Florentine schools, makes a thriller agile, plenty of fascinating riddles.
Errante en la sombra was published in 2004. It is an original musical novel unfolds as a spectacle in front of the reader who can 'see' and 'listen' to this story that takes place in the Buenos Aires that once was reality and now is a legend. Andahazi wrote more than forty tangos to give life to this original story in which Carlos Gardel takes part.
During the summer of 2005 Andahazi and his readers worked in an interesting and original experience, in fact, the first of this kind in the world: the collective writing of a newspaper serial called Mapas del fin del mundo published by the newspaper Diario Clarín.
The author wrote the beginning of a text, giving the place to the readers to continue the story, creating characters, proposing plots, solving riddles, to be sent by e-mail. Therefore, in an unprecedented work, reading and answering thousands of e-mails per week, Andahazi built the story with the various inputs and points of view. Every Saturday a new chapter was added to the novel, increasing the participation and the expectation of readers converted into co-authors.
The same year, in 2005, was published La ciudad de los herejes, a novel set in medieval France, which revolves around the origin of the Shroud of Turin. In this scenario, the author describes the dark mechanisms that generated the Church and the feudal power to establish sordid methods of control and oppression, building a new idolatry that Church said it fought.
In 2006, Federico Andahazi won the Planeta Prize with his novel El conquistador. The jury unanimously decided the verdict. El conquistador is the story of Quetza, the most brilliant son of Tenochtitlan, ahead of Christopher Columbus he discovered a new continent: Europe.
He participated in numerous anthologies, among which are: Las palabras pueden: Los escritores y la infancia (2007, to UNICEF and World Food Program) with authors like José Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Ernesto Sábato, Juan Gelman, Mario Benedetti and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Líneas aéreas (1999, published by Lengua de trapo, Spain) with writers such as Jorge Volpi, Santiago Gamboa and Edmundo Paz Soldán. A Whistler in the nightworld, short fiction from the Latin Americas (2002, published by Plume, USA) Laura Restrepo and Ángeles Mastretta among others. La Selección Argentina (2000, published by Tusquets).
El libro de los nuevos pecados capitales (2001, Norma Publishing Group). He also participated in the book Homage to Diego Maradona (2001, SAF) in the prestigious company of Roberto Fontanarrosa and Pacho O'Donnell.
In 2008, Andahazi published his first book of nonfiction, Pecar como Dios manda, Sexual History of Argentines. The essay runs in an hypothesis through all his work: you cannot understand the history of a country if you don’t know the history of sex that gestured it.
With a prose that does not forget the novelist, the author conducted this first volume in an exhaustive investigation that starts from the original cultures and reaches the May Revolution.
Federico Andahazi currently is working on the following volumes of the sexual history of the Argentines and in various fiction projects.