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Manuel Puig
(1932 - 1990) Argentina

Manuel Puig

Writer, novelist

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Manuel PuigHe was born in General Villegas, an isolated town in Buenos Aires province where, from an early age, he visited the local cinema regularly to escape the boredom of his small provincial town in the middle of Argentinian pampa. Puig was sent to boarding school in Buenos Aires and, from 1950, attended the University of Buenos Aires without, however, completing his degree. He left Argentina il 1955 and lived in Rome, Paris, London and, ultimately, New York.

Political and sexual repression go hand-in-hand in his work. After a failed attempt to become a filmmaker (he studied in the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome), he concentrated on fiction-writing. Puig's El beso de la mujer araña (Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1976) is the most videly disseminated text representing Hispanic homosexuality.

He never really came out as a gay man and his work shows some degree of mistrust for fixed identities. However Puig had no problem in dealing with his sexual orientation in everyday life. Puig died of an AIDS-related disease, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

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Source: excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, from WWII to Present Day, Routledge, London, 2001

His work include:

  • La tración de Rita Hayworth (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, 1968)
  • Boquitas pintades (Heartbreak Tango, 1969)
  • The Buenos Aires Affair (1973)
  • El beso de la mujer araña (Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1976)
  • Tropical Night Falling (1992)
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