Perhaps unsurprisingly in a city so full of bookstores, the Herald newsroom is full of voracious readers. Our desks often resemble a book club, and there’s no better way to distract the whole team than announcing one’s latest read to the room. With that in mind, we’ve decided to share a selection of the most recent with you. 

From some of the best-known contemporary Argentine novelists and essayists to an Italian physicist promising to challenge your view of reality, here are the books we can’t put down this week. 

Elena Sabe (Elena Knows) by Claudia Piñeiro (Debolsillo, 2022, 176 pages)

A touching novela about Elena, a woman with advanced Parkinsons, trying to uncover the truth about the death of her daughter. Currently being made into a Netflix series, this book by the famed feminist crime novelist deals with themes of care work, bodily autonomy, and motherhood. – Amy Booth

Pájaros en la boca y otros cuentos (Mouthful of birds) by Samanta Schweblin (Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, 2018, 186 pages)

A collection of 22 short standalone stories written by Schweblin over the years. They combine observations of the everyday with unpredictable elements of fantasy and horror that leave the reader feeling disconcerted. -Valen Iricibar

Plano Americano by Leila Guerriero (Anagrama, 2018, 568 pages)

In this compilation, you’ll find twenty-six writers, painters, journalists, photographers, filmmakers, and musicians from Latin America beautifully and skillfully profiled by Argentine journalist Leila Guerriero. The likes of Marta Minujín, Roberto Arlt, Idea Villariño, Nicanor Parra, and Lucrecia Martel open up their creative and intimate worlds — whether you are familiar with them or not, thanks to Guerriero’s poetic writing, delicate interviewing, and thorough research, you will not forget easily about these people’s peculiar souls. – Facundo Iglesia

Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives) by Roberto Bolaño (Anagrama, 1998, 609 pages)

A novel spanning twenty years and three continents with an endless cast of voices hovering around two poets and their search for a legendary poet who mysteriously disappeared following the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s. Bolaño’s novel reads like a tale of adventures, with political revolutions and gunmen, kidnappings and love affairs, all bound by an obsessive love for literature. – Juan Décima

Reality is not what it seems by Carlo Rovelli (Penguin Books, 2017, 253 pages).

Rovelli is an Italian physicist who made fundamental contributions to his field. In this book he explains, in a simple and sometimes poetic way, the theory of relativity. Reality is not what it seems, he says, and opens up a wonderful universe of powerful ideas for us to reconsider what we think about the world and ourselves. – Estefanía Pozzo

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