Wild Desire and Other Writings

A galvanizing look at life on the margins of society by a crowning figure of Latin America’s queer counterculture who celebrated ＂melodrama, kitsch, extravagance, and vulgarity of all kinds＂ (Garth Greenwell) in playful, performative, linguistically inventive essays, now available in English for the first time

A Penguin Classic

＂I speak from my difference,＂ wrote Pedro Lemebel, an openly queer writer and artist living through Chile’s AIDS epidemic and the collapse of the Pinochet dictatorship. In brilliantly innovative essays--known as crónicas--that combine memoir, reportage, fiction, history, and poetry, he brought visibility and dignity to sexual minorities, the poor, and the powerless. Touching on everything from Che Guevara to Elizabeth Taylor, from the aftermath of authoritarian rule to the daily lives of Chile’s locas--a slur for trans women and effeminate gay men that he boldly reclaims--his writing infuses political urgency with playfulness, realism with absurdism, and resistance with camp, and his AIDS crónicas immortalize a generation of Chileans doubly ＂disappeared＂ by casting each loca, as she falls sick, in the starring role of her own private tragedy. This volume brings together the best of his work, introducing readers of English to the subversive genius of a literary activist and queer icon whose acrobatic explorations of the Santiago demimonde reverberate around the world.

For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015) is considered one of the most important queer writers of twentieth century Latin America. Born in Santiago, Chile, he became a renowned voice of Latin American counterculture throughout the Pinochet dictatorship and its aftermath. In 1999 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to compile stories of homosexuality in Chile, and in 2013 he received the José Donoso Prize. His only novel, My Tender Matador, was adapted in 2020 into a critically-acclaimed film by Chilean director Rodrigo Sepúlveda.

Gwendolyn Harper (translator) won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Works in Progress grant from the Robert B. Silvers foundation for Wild Desire and Other Writings. She has an MFA from Brown University.

Idra Novey (foreword) is the award-winning author of the novels Ways to Disappear, Those Who Knew, and Take What You Need. She lived in Chile for two years and returns every year; she speaks Spanish at home and translates from Spanish, as well as from Portuguese and Persian. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages, and she’s written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. She teaches at Princeton University and New York University.