Juan Manuel Torres was 24 years old when, in 1962, he won a scholarship to study at the National Film School in Lodz, Poland. In that country he met Jolanta Garbowska and married her, where his daughter Claudia was born. The six years he lived in Poland allowed him to master the language, to be dazzled by Polish literature and to prove himself as an excellent translator, although most of his works have been lost.
The story of Torres's invisible work, that of translation, is the story of the introduction into the Spanish-speaking world of two of the greatest Polish authors of the twentieth century, and demonstrates the extent to which translation can be a collaborative task (in this case between Torres and his great friend Sergio Pitol), carried out with great effort but then easily forgotten.
This volume brings together his translations of the stories of Bruno Schulz and Witold Gombrowicz, as well as the correspondence that in those years and later, upon his return to Mexico in 1968, he maintained with Sergio Pitol, José Emilio Pacheco, Witold Gombrowicz, Jolanta Garbowska and Claudia Torres. The volume is complemented by essays by guest scholars that put both the work of Schulz and Gombrowicz and the work of Torres in context, enhancing the value and uniqueness of their translations. Also, with the testimony of Héctor Azar, who visited him in Poland, and with a moving text from his daughter Claudia. All accompanied by footnotes and photographs unpublished until now.