Angélica Gorodischer is an Argentine

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

  writer known for her collection of short stories, which belong to a wide variety of genres, including science-fiction, fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

, crime

Crime

Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...

 and stories with a feminist

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 perspective.
Even though she was born in Buenos Aires, she has lived in Rosario

Rosario

Rosario is the largest city in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It is located northwest of Buenos Aires, on the western shore of the Paraná River and has 1,159,004 residents as of the ....

 since she was eight, and this city appears very frequently in her work. In 2007 the city council awarded her the title of Illustrious Citizen.

In the English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

-speaking world Gorodischer might be best known for Kalpa Imperial (In Argentina volume 1 appeared in 1983 and both volumes by 1984). Its English translation came in 2003 by United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 speculative fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...

. A collection of short stories, it details the history of a vast imaginary empire

Empire

The term empire derives from the Latin imperium . Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....

 through tales of fantasy, fable, and allegory

Allegory

Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

. It does this in a way that gained in many admirers who deem it to be one of the finest genre work of Argentina. It also gained supporters in the English speaking world. A part of the work appeared as a story in the American anthology Starlight 2.
She also produced many works before Kalpa Imperial including the collections Opus dos [Opus two, 1967], Bajo las jubeas en flor [Under the Flowering Jubeas, 1973], and Casta Luna Electronica [Chaste Electric Moon, 1977].
She was a science fiction author noted for her work about the differences of power among men and women. She focused on the pros and cons of people in power and wrote about corrupt rulers.

Gorodischer is author of two novels within the genre of detective fiction. Gorodischer has created an intriguing detective personae; she is a female grand dame who reluctantly and haphazardly engages in the world of international intrigue. She made her literary debut in 1985 in Gorodischer’s short fictional tale or noveleta entitled Floreros de alabastro, alfombras de Bokhara,reappearing later in different form in Jugo de mango (1988).

Works

• Cuentos con soldados (Premio Club del Orden, Santa Fe, 1965. stories)
• Opus Dos (Ediciones Minotauro, Buenos Aires, 1967. novel)
• Las pelucas (Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 1968. stories)
• Bajo las jubeas en flor (Ediciones De La Flor, Buenos Aires, 1973. stories)
• Casta luna electrónica (Ediciones Andrómeda, 1977. stories)
• Trafalgar (El Cid Editor, Buenos Aires, 1979. stories)
• Kalpa imperial (Ediciones Minotauro, Buenos Aires, 1983. stories)
• Mala noche y parir hembra (Ediciones La Campana, Buenos Aires, 1983. stories)
• Floreros de alabastro, alfombras de Bokhara (Vases of Alabaster, Carpets from Bokhara). Lyndhurst, NJ: Lectorum Publications, 1985. (novel)
• Jugo de mango Emecé Editores, Buenos Aires, 1988. Novela.
• Las Repúblicas Ediciones de la Flor, Buenos Aires, 1991. Relatos.
• Fábula de la virgen y el bombero. Buenos Aires: Editiones de la Flor, 1993. (novel)
• Mujeres de palabra. Editor. San Juan: University of Puerto Rico Press, 1994.
• Prodigios. Barcelona: Ed. Lumen, 1994. (novel)
• Tecnicas de supervivencia. Rosario: Ed. Municipal Rosario, 1994. (stories)
• La noche del inocente. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1996. (novel)
• Cómo triunfar en la vida. Buenos Aires, Emecé, 1998. (stories)
• "The End of a Dynasty." Chapter from Kalpa Imperial. Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin. In Starlight 2. Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. New York: Tor, 1999.

English Translation

• Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was. Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin. Northampton: Small Beer Press, 2003. ISBN 1-931520-05-4