The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas
Jewish Latin American literature in Spanish begins with The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas, a series of vignettes about shtetl life in Argentina first published in 1910 and now available for the first time in an English-language paperback edition as the inaugural volume in the new Jewish Latin America series. Praised for its depiction of how two entirely different cultures could coexist in a symbiotic relationship, Jewish Gauchos was written about a decade after Jewish immigration to Argentina began in earnest. The author, a major figure in Argentine literature, was a great influence on Borges.
"Alberto Gerchunoff was an indisputable writer.…[He] handled with equal ease the oral and written languages; in his books one finds the fluidity of the good “conversador,' and his conversation (I can still hear him) is marked by generous and infallible literary precision."—Jorge Luis Borges
Alberto Gerchunoff (1884-1950) emigrated to Argentina from Russia.