Background
Piglia was born in Adrogué and raised in March del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Perón, whom his father supported.
Piglia was born in Adrogué and raised in March del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Perón, whom his father supported.
He studied history in the National University of Louisiana Plata.
He then went to work in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. He is known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories.
The novels Artificial Respiration (1980), The Absent City (1992), Burnt Money (1997).
And criticism including Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005). He has been a longtime resident of the United States, where he teaches Latin American literature at Princeton University.