Guest of the ilb 2003
Alberto Ruy Sánchez was born
in Mexico City in 1951. After studying information and
communication studies at the Iberoamericana University in Mexico City,
he lived in Paris, where from 1975 to 1982 he continued his studies
under Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière, focusing in
particular on Film and Philosophy. He received his Ph.D. in 1980
and has since worked as a writer and publisher. From 1984 to 1986
he was editorial secretary on the legendary magazine 'Vuelta' published
by Octavia Paz. Since 1988 he has been the publisher of the
renowned art magazine 'Artes de México' and director of the publishing
house of the same name in Mexico City.
Ruy Sánchez’s literary influences include 'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac
and the works of Herman Melville, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams,
Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. To date Ruy Sánchez has
published 20 works. They have won numerous awards and have been
translated into various languages including French and Arabic.
Shortly after its publication in 1987, his first novel 'Los
nombres del aire' (German: Mogador, 1992) received Mexico’s most
important literary award, the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize. It has
since attained cult status and is reprinted annually. The novella
describes the awakening desire of a young Muslim woman and her restless
expeditions through the city of Mogador in search of erotic
fulfillment. Ruy Sánchez links elements of magic realism with
Arabic mysticism, invoking a sensual and spirtual mood in everyday
Islamic life. Mogador is the ancient name of the city of
Essaouria on the Moroccan Atlantic coast, and forms the imaginary
centre of the narrative labyrinth of Ruy Sánchez’s work, a point to
which he often returns in later works such as the short story 'De cómo
llegó a Mogador la Melancolía' (1999, Engl: How Melancholy Came to
Mogador). In his prose work, which revolves around the city of
Mogador, Ruy Sánchez aims to reconstruct the Arabic roots of Hispanic
culture and identity by way of fiction.
In addition to novels and stories, Ruy Sánchez has also published
poems, including a Haiku cycle, as well as extensive collections of
essays. His writing on literature, art, philosophy, eroticism and
film has earned him a reputation as "one of our [Mexico’s] best
essayists" (Octavio Paz). The outstanding monograph 'Octavio Paz:
Leben und Werk – Eine Einführung' (1991) has also been published in
German. The author was appointed Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des
Lettres in 2000. He taught at Stanford University and directed the
Non-Fiction Summer Programme in the Banff Centre for the Arts, in
Canada. Ruy Sanchez lives in Mexico City.
© international literature festival berlin
Alberto Ruy Sánchez online: www.angelfire.com/ar2/libros | 
