Roberto Brodsky is a Chilean writer and scholar living in New York, where he teaches cinema and literature at the School of Visual Arts. In addition to six novels, he is the author of La casa que falta (The Missing House; Peter Lang, 2020) which presents his long essay on Enrique Lihn’s work in the 1980s during the dictatorship in Chile. His new novel Lobos (Wolves) was published in April 2026 by Penguin Random House.
Translated from Spanish by Jonathan Cohen and David Unger
With a contribution by Roberto Brodsky
Enrique Lihn is among the most important Chilean poets, alongside Nicanor Parra, since the generation of Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, and Pablo Neruda. Lihn’s first two poetry books represented here—Nada se escurre (Nothing Slips Away), 1949, and Poemas de este tiempo y de otro, (Poems of This Time and Another), 1955—introduce his dark, lyric genius and existential intensity. These works sounded the clarion call announcing that a new voice had been born within the rich and unrestrained tradition of Chilean poetry. This current volume contains a marvelous selection of Lihn’s pioneering early work, translated exquisitely by Jonathan Cohen and David Unger, and introduced by the Chilean journalist and Lihn scholar Roberto Brodsky.
