Benjamín Labatut was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 1980. He spent his childhood in The Hague, Buenos Aires and Lima, and at the age of fourteen he settled in Santiago, Chile. La Antártica empieza aquí, his first book of short stories, was published in Mexico, where he won the 2009 Caza de Letras Prize, awarded by the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Alfaguara publishing house. In Chile his work appeared in 2012, and a year later he won the Santiago Municipal Prize. His second book, Después de la luz, published in 2016, consists of a series of scientific, philosophical and historical notes on the void, written after a profound personal crisis. His third book, When We Cease to Understand the World, has become an international success, being translated into more than 30 languages. It was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award in the category of best book translated into English. In 2021 he published La piedra de la locura, a reflection on chaos and madness based on scientific theories, literary expressions and personal experiences. His latest book, The MANIAC, will be published at the end of 2023; a haunting story about the Hungarian scholar John von Neumann, which charts the impact of his unique legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the 20th century and the dawning age of AI.
Photo: © Julieta Labatut