Daniel Sorín

Daniel Sorín was born in Buenos Aires on 7 August 1951. He was the brother of the Argentine film director Carlos Sorín. Little has been published about his childhood and education.

Sorín came to wide notice in 1998, when his first novel, Error de cálculo, won the Emecé Novel Prize and was published by Emecé. The book recast the crimes of the 1976 to 1983 military dictatorship as science fiction, and the critic Luis Pestarini described it as a reinterpretation of the dictatorship's atrocities in a science fiction key. The writer María Rosa Lojo, a member of the jury, remembered it as a very original political satire.

His work drew constantly on Argentine history and politics. El dandy argentino (Norma, 2000) was a novelised biography of the nineteenth century soldier and writer Lucio V. Mansilla. Palabras escandalosas (Sudamericana, 2003) was a fable about an apocalyptic prophet set in the first decade of the twentieth century, and Palacios. Un caballero socialista (Sudamericana, 2004) dealt with the socialist politician Alfredo Palacios. Velas para Gilda (La Bohemia, 2007) continued the story of Error de cálculo.

He went on to publish El hombre que engañó a Perón (Sudamericana, 2008), El cerco (Del Nuevo Extremo, 2012), La última carta (Edhasa, 2013), Tres segundos es una eternidad (Vestales, 2016) and Plan Patagonia (Al Fondo a la Derecha, 2020), a dystopia shaped by political events in Latin America. John William Cooke, the Peronist lawyer and politician, was the subject of La última carta and of the essay John William Cooke. La mano izquierda de Perón (Planeta, 2014). His essay El peronismo de las tres banderas appeared in 2024, and his last novel, the thriller El muro, was presented at the National Library on 6 May 2026. He also contributed stories and essays to anthologies in Argentina, Colombia and Spain.

For eighteen years and nine months he worked at the Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno, where he was active in cultural management until his retirement.

Sorín was married to the artist Andrea Martinetti and had three daughters. With his daughter Valeria he promoted the charity anthology Palabras para La Poderosa, published during the pandemic by Al Fondo a la Derecha. His friend Gustavo Abrevaya recalled him as a rigorous and precise intellectual and a devoted Boca Juniors supporter who liked to photograph his fellow writers.

Daniel Sorín died in Buenos Aires on 21 October 2026 at the age of 75. His family announced the death and La Nación reported that he had cancer. The Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno published a farewell on 22 October, and the Unión de Escritoras y Escritores and writers including José María Gatti, Oscar Tabernise and Ingrid Pelicori paid tribute.

Sorín left more than a dozen novels and essays that used crime fiction, science fiction and historical narrative to examine Argentine politics, memory and Peronism. The National Library holds his work in its collections. María Rosa Lojo said that what remained was his extensive and many sided body of work.