By Editorial Staff
Updated: July 4, 2026
In an era defined by the rapid-fire consumption of digital content, the act of sitting down with a book has become an act of defiance. Few contemporary voices are as well-positioned to comment on this shifting landscape as Mariana Enriquez. The Argentine journalist and novelist, a titan of contemporary gothic literature and winner of the 2024 Ibero-American Jose Donoso Prize, recently sat down to discuss the evolution of her craft, the sanctity of her reading habits, and the existential crisis facing literacy in the 21st century.
With her work translated into more than 30 languages, Enriquez has cultivated a global following. Yet, despite her literary stature, she remains deeply concerned about a fundamental cultural shift: the struggle to maintain human attention in a world dominated by the "hyper-offer" of screens.
The Architecture of a Reader: Childhood and Foundational Myths
Mariana Enriquez (Buenos Aires, 1973) does not come from a lineage of literary scholars. Her parents—a doctor and an engineer—were well-educated, but their home was not a curated library of high-brow literature. Instead, Enriquez’s initiation into the world of letters was driven by the accessible, eclectic, and highly visual nature of the Club Bruguera collection.
"I didn’t buy books in bookstores as a child," Enriquez recalls. "I bought them at newsstands. They were part of a vast, colorful collection. I was drawn to them because of their hues: Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood was a striking red; a Borges anthology was yellow; Graham Greene’s The Quiet American was a soft lavender."
These newsstand acquisitions provided a gateway to universal literature that bypassed the traditional institutional barriers of libraries or academic recommendations. This formative period was further shaped by her uncle, who was part of a book club and would gift her the volumes he disliked. One such gift, Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, proved to be a catalyst for her creative imagination. "It is a story about a child who reads and eventually enters the book itself to influence the narrative," she notes. "It remains the most powerful metaphor for the act of reading I have ever encountered."
Chronology of a Literary Life: From Newsstands to Global Acclaim
- 1973: Mariana Enriquez is born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Early 1980s: Develops a formative reading habit through newsstand collections like Club Bruguera, favoring tactile and visual experiences.
- 1990s-2000s: Begins her professional career in journalism while establishing herself as a distinct voice in contemporary horror and social realism.
- 2020s: Gains massive international recognition, culminating in the 2024 Ibero-American Jose Donoso Prize.
- 2026: Serves as a leading critical voice on the intersection of technology, education, and literary consumption.
The Ritual of the Page: Habits and Disconnects
For Enriquez, reading is not a passive activity; it is a physical, almost violent engagement with the object. She is a firm believer in the sanctity of the paper book. "I underline with a pencil—never a pen—and I keep my books carefully. My copies are full of traces, annotations, and marginalia. They are living documents of my encounter with the text."
Her habits are nocturnal, often serving as a "good farewell to the day." While she acknowledges the convenience of e-readers for travel, she maintains that they lack the "irreplaceable" quality of a printed volume. "If I read something on a digital device that I truly enjoy, I will immediately go out and purchase the physical copy," she asserts.
Perhaps most revealing is her stance on the digital audio revolution. Despite the explosion of podcasts and audiobooks, Enriquez finds them distracting. "I admire those who can maintain their attention for seven hours while listening, but for me, there is a disconnect. I need the silence of the page."
Implications: The Crisis of Attention and the Role of the State
The core of Enriquez’s argument lies in the socio-political dimension of reading. She rejects the notion that the decline in deep reading is a failure of the individual, pointing instead to systemic institutional neglect.
"We are living in a time where people are perhaps more literate than ever, but the majority of their reading is not literature—it is the endless scrolling of digital screens," she observes. "The biggest competitor for my time is the smartphone. If I, a professional writer, struggle against the pull of social media, how can we expect the youth to resist?"
The Failure of Cultural Policy
Enriquez is particularly critical of the lack of government intervention in promoting reading. She argues that the market alone cannot bridge the gap between a non-reader and a literary enthusiast.
"In my youth, many of the collections I bought at newsstands were indirectly subsidized by the state," she explains. "The government understood that if a worker had access to an affordable book at a kiosk while commuting, they might pick it up. Today, that vision is gone. There is a pervasive, dangerous idea that culture is not a ‘first necessity.’ In our countries, culture seems to matter less every day, often sacrificed in favor of addressing immediate crises like hunger or housing. I believe that one does not preclude the other; a healthy society requires both."
Perspectives on the Next Generation: The "Cyborg" Challenge
Teaching journalism and narrative writing has given Enriquez a front-row seat to the changing cognitive habits of young people. She describes a generational divide that is far deeper than the cultural shifts of the 1960s.
"Young people today are more ‘cyborg’ than I am," she admits. "They were born with a phone in their hand. When I try to teach Truman Capote, they see a crime from the 1950s in Kansas and ask, ‘How is this relevant to me?’ Literature is inherently slow—it demands a breadth and a pace that the digital present does not tolerate. It is difficult to compete with the immediacy of an algorithm."
Despite this, she remains cautiously optimistic. When a young reader finally "penetrates" the barrier of a book, the experience remains "unbeatable." The challenge, she insists, is not the content itself—even if she personally dislikes the style of some Young Adult phenomena—but the training of attention.
"If Harry Potter is the gateway that gets a child to read seven massive volumes, that is a victory. It is an exercise in focus. But the institutional support to transition that reader from commercial fiction to more complex literary landscapes is entirely absent."
The Ideal Collaborator: A Dream of Literary Complicity
When asked about her creative process, Enriquez reveals a pragmatic approach to editorial feedback. She avoids showing her early drafts to large groups, preferring the focused, "obsessive" eye of her closest friend, who functions as a mechanic checking the engine of the manuscript.
Regarding her literary aspirations, her list of dream collaborators is telling of her aesthetic preferences:
- Arthur Rimbaud: Her adolescent obsession. She expresses a desire to ask him why he abandoned literature for the life of an arms dealer in Africa—a "literary mystery" she finds more compelling than the work of most writers.
- Carson McCullers: A writer whose mastery of character depth, even in minor roles, leaves Enriquez in awe. She describes McCullers’ work as "rigorous," despite its appearance of freedom.
- Samanta Schweblin: Among her contemporaries, Schweblin is the only one with whom she imagines a collaborative project. "We have such enthusiastic, deep literary conversations," she notes. "Though I suspect our distinct personal styles and writing methods would make it an incredibly difficult, if not impossible, endeavor."
Conclusion: A Call for Political Will
Mariana Enriquez’s reflections serve as a sobering diagnosis of the literary world. By framing the crisis of reading as a political issue rather than a moral failing of the youth, she shifts the burden of responsibility back onto the institutions that have allowed access to culture to wither.
"There is no romantic answer to this," she concludes. "There is only a political one. We need affordable, accessible books in the places where people actually live, not just in ivory-tower bookstores. We need to stop pretending that culture is a luxury. If we want to maintain the capacity for complex thought, for empathy, and for the slow, transformative power of reading, the state must once again decide that it matters."
As she continues to produce works that push the boundaries of the gothic and the uncanny, Enriquez remains a steadfast advocate for the written word. In her view, the book is not a dying medium; it is a sleeping giant that requires the right environment to wake.
