Translation Rights TQE / The Bioy

In December of 1949, upon her arrival from her native Spain, Jovita Iglesias met Silvina Ocampo. The amazement was mutual: Jovita was impressed by this woman who wrote and who lived in a splendid apartment with her husband Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Silvina knew that the lovely young woman had entered her life to remain a part of it. Jovita worked and lived with the couple for nearly fifty years, and was witness to the love, happiness, problems, and tragedies of such a contradictory and affectionate family. In Los Bioy (The Bioy), Silvia Arias gathers the words of Jovita, who tells with tenderness, humour, truthfulness, and oftentimes with melancholy - but never judging the acts of others – unknown episodes of the lives of Silvina, Adolfo, and their daughter Marta. Lives that formed part of her own existence and that today writing has managed to rescue from forgetfulness.

Jovita Iglesias was born in Pacios de Toubes de Villa Rubín, Orense (Spain), on September 13, 1925. She arrived in Argentina on November 22, 1949 and a month later met Silvina Ocampo, the wife of Adolfo Bioy Casares. From that moment and until the death of the author on March 8, 1999, Jovita shared the life of the Bioy family, first in Santa Fe and Ecuador, and later in the apartment on Posadas Street: She was a house-keeper, confidant and friend to both, but especially to Silvina. She currently lives in the neighbourhood of Palermo (Buenos Aires) with her husband, José Montes Blanco, who also worked for the Bioy family.

Silvia Renée Arias was born in Tres Arroyos, a province of Buenos Aires, in 1963, and in 1984 moved to Buenos Aires, where she currently resides, to study journalism. She developed her journalistic skills in Editorial Perfil and has been a collaborator in various cultural publications in Argentina and abroad. In June of 1998 she published her first book, Bioy en privado (Bioy in Private), which gathered her conversations with Adolfo Bioy Casares throughout five years. A member of the literary workshop of Abelardo Castillo, she is currently working on a book of short stories and on her first novel.