A pioneer of autofiction in Mexico, Juan Manuel Torres (Minatitlán, Veracruz, 1938) published only one book of short stories (El viaje, 1969) and one novel (Didascalias, 1970) before tragically dying in a car accident in 1980, on the verge of his 42nd birthday.
The originality of his work and the daring of his autofictional approach, which today is commonplace, was not understood by many in his day. Torres' journey is the journey of search: the multiple journey through the world, through literature, through consciousness, both to discover the other and to discover oneself. The search takes on different forms: one searches for a language, a form, a teacher, a poetics. This multiple search implies, therefore, experimentation, the mode of trial and error, repetition. The Journey is a book with multiple beginnings and endings, an attempt to order the chaos that looms around the narrator's memory.
This volume brings together the stories that make up The Journey, nine more published in cultural supplements of the time and one unpublished. They are accompanied by footnotes, various essays (from his time and contemporary) and testimonies from his family. This is, therefore, a "rescue edition" that seeks to recover for the literary collection a work that has not previously obtained sufficient critical or editorial attention. Our objective has been to try to restore to Torres' work the literary dignity it deserves by making it possible for the widest possible audience to read it.
The Complete Works of Juan Manuel Torres comprise, in addition to this one, a second volume on his translations from Polish and his correspondence, a third, dedicated to the novel, and a fourth, to cinema.