Book description
In 1993 Miranda France moved to South America, drawn to Buenos Aires as
the intellectual hub of the continent, with its wealth of writers and
its romantic, passionate and tragic history. She found that is was all
these things, but it was also a terrible place to live.
The inhabitants of Buenos Aires are famously unhappy. All over South
America they are known for their arrogance, their fixation of Europe and
their moodiness. Very soon, Miranda France encounters' bronca' - the
simmering and barely controllable rage that is a staple feature of life
in the Argentinian capital. She finds that 'bronca' has deep roots: the
violence and racism of the first European settlers; the dictatorships,
especially in the 1970s when so many 'disappeared'; even Evita Peron,
for there was no rage to rival Evita's. Miranda France was born in
1966 and was brought up in East Anglia and Sussex. She read Spainsh and
Latin American Studies at Edinburgh University, which included a year in
Madrid. In the early 1990s she lived in Brazil and Edinburgh and then
Buenos Aires, and in 1996 she won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for a
piece about her time in Buenos Aires. Her first book, Bad Times in
Buenos Aires, was published in 1998. She lives with her husband and
young son in London
