Eine Geschichte

An Argentinian epic about dance

“This is the story of a man who took part in a dance contest.” It is thus that Argentine journalist and author Leila Guerriero opens her book. It tells the most difficult of all epic stories: that of the common man.

This is an electrifying work that spans the genres of journalism and fiction. It tells a moving and strangely intimate story about malambo, a traditional dance of the Argentine gauchos, and about the Malambo Festival of Laborde in the southeast of the Argentinian province of Córdoba. It is also about Rodolfo González Alcántara, who won the dance competition in 2012.

Leila Guerriero is a gifted chronicler. Her internationally acclaimed work A Simple Story was published in Spanish in 2013 and in English in 2017, and now appears in German for the first time, in a translation by Angelica Ammar.