Bernardo Verbitsky was 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 and journalist, and father of Horacio Verbitsky

Horacio Verbitsky

Horacio Verbitsky is a prominent Argentine investigative journalist and author. He writes for the left-leaning Argentine newspaper Página/12 and heads up the Center for Legal and Social Studies , an Argentine human-rights organization.He is also a member of the Directive Board of Human Rights...

.

Verbitsky was a screenwriter, a journalist from Noticias Gráficas, and a member of Academia Porteña del Lunfardo

Lunfardo

Lunfardo is a dialect originated and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the lower classes in Buenos Aires and the surrounding Gran Buenos Aires, and from there spread to other cities nearby, such as Rosario and Montevideo, cities with similar socio-cultural situations...

("Buenos Aires Lunfardo's Academy"). He reported Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

' ups and downs; his writings were linked to tango and other essential aspects of the city. Hugo del Carril

Hugo del Carril

Pierre Bruno Hugo Fontana otherwise known as Hugo del Carril was an Argentine film actor, film director and tango singer of the classic era.-Early life:...

 based its 1958 motion picture Una cita con la vida ("A date with life" http://imdb.com/title/tt0185992/) on Verbitsky's novel Calles de tango)

His 1957 novel Villa Miseria también es América (roughly "Povertyville is also [a part of] America

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

") gave its popular name to Argentina's shanty town

Shanty town

A shanty town is a slum settlement of impoverished people who live in improvised dwellings made from scrap materials: often plywood, corrugated metal and sheets of plastic...

s (villas miseria

Villa miseria

A villa miseria is a form of shanty town or slum found in Argentina, mostly around the largest urban settlements. The term is a compound noun made of the Spanish words villa "village, small town" and miseria "misery, dejection"...

).

Bernardo Verbitsky died in Buenos Aires on March 15, 1979.

Books in Spanish

• Es difícil empezar a vivir ("It's hard to start living") (1940)
• Significación de Stefan Zweig -ensayo- (1942)
• En estos años ("During these years") (1947)
• Café de los Angelitos y otros cuentos porteños ("Little Angels' Café and other porteño
  Porteño
  Porteño in Spanish is used to refer to a person who is from or lives in a port city, but it can also be used as an adjective for anything related to those port cities....
  
   stories") (1950)
• Una pequeña familia ("A small family") (1951)
• La esquina ("The corner") (1953)
• Calles de tango ("Tango streets") (1953)
• Vacaciones ("Vacations") (1953)
• Un noviazgo ("A relationship") (1956)
• Villa Miseria también es América ("Povertyville is also America") (1957)
• Megatón -poemas- (1959)
• El teatro de Arthur Miller -ensayo- (1959)
• La tierra es azul ("The Earth is blue") (1961)
• Hamlet y Don Quijote (ensayo) (1964)
• Un hombre de papel (1966)
• La neurosis monta su espectáculo (1969)
• Etiquetas a los hombres -edit. in Barcelona- (1972)
• Enamorado de Joan Baez -edit. in Barcelona- (1975)
• Literatura y consciencia nacional -ensayos- (1975)
• Octubre maduro -stories- (1976)
• Hermana y sombra (1977)
• A pesar de todo -stories- (1978)

Awards

• "Ricardo Güiraldes" award, (in trial with Jorge Luis Borges
  Jorge Luis Borges
  Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
  
  , Guillermo De Torre y Norah Lange
  Norah Lange
  Norah Lange was an Argentine author, associated with the Buenos Aires avant garde of the 1920s and 1930s....
  
  ) by Es Difícil Empezar a Vivir (1941).
• "Alberto Gerchunoff" award (1965) by Es Difícil Empezar a Vivir.
• "Faja de Honor" of the Writer's Argentina Society (SADE) by En esos años.
• "Municipal" award by Villa Miseria También Es América.
• Mention in an award from Kraft Edit. by Villa Miseria también es América.
• "Faja de Honor" of the SADE by La Neurosis Monta Su Espectáculo.
• "Club of the XIII" by Hermana Y Sombra.
• Dupuytrén Foundation award by Hermana Y Sombra.

Further Reading

• Argentina's Jewish Short Story Writers, Rita M. Gardiol, 1986.

Sources

• This article draws from the corresponding article in the Spanish Wikipedia.