Eduardo Galeano Novelist, Writer, Journalist

I write hoping to help people rediscover the human rainbow, its splendid colors, its shimmer. That rainbow, our rainbow, has been mutilated by racism, sexism, elitism, and all the other isms that prevent us from seeing ourselves in the fullness of our potential beauty.

In that sense, my writing could be defined as an attempt to refute borders on the map and on the calendar. I would like to draw on what I have lived to help sow appreciation of the universality of human experience. Because, I confess, I am a lover of people from other times and other places, which is in a way a response to the compulsory globalization of today’s world. To counter globalization ruled by money, with all its powerful talk, my stories try to reclaim an internationalism born centuries ago out of celebration of human diversity.*

—Eduardo Galeano is one of Latin America’s most distinguished writers. He is the author of the trilogy Memory of Fire, Open Veins of Latin America, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, Days and Nights of Love and War, The Book of Embraces, Walking Words, Voices of Time, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World and Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone. His most recent book is Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History. Born in Montevideo in 1940, he lived in exile in Argentina and Spain for years before returning to Uruguay. His work has inspired popular and classical composers and playwrights from all over the world and has been translated into thirty languages. He is the recipient of many international prizes, including the first Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, the American Book Award, the Casa de las Américas Prize and the First Distinguished Citizen of the region by the countries of Mercosur.

*translated from the Spanish by Mark Fried

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2paragraphs gives special thanks to Anderson Tepper for curating our International Writers Interviews. Mr. Tepper is on the staff of Vanity Fair and is a Contributing Editor at Words Without Borders.