Paris in the Eyes of Argentine Women: Paula Wajsman’s Informe de París (1990) and María Moreno’s El Affair Skeffington (1992)

Abstract

This article examines the fictional rendering of Paris in two Argentine novels published just two years apart but with strongly contrasting receptions: Paula Wajsman’s Informe de París (1990) and María Moreno’s El Affair Skeffington (1992). While Wajsman died in 1995, having published only one novel that went mostly unnoticed in literary and academic circles, Moreno has been a leading figure in the Argentine cultural scene for the past two decades. A comparative study of Wajsman and Moreno allows us to explore how they rewrote the paradigmatic significance of Paris for Argentine culture through a shared feminist lens. Ultimately, I argue that Informe de París and El Affair Skeffington situate their female characters in Paris as a means of turning the so-called ‘literary capital of Latin America’ into a ‘third space’ that enables renewed modes of literature and community beyond the limits of gender and the nation.