Martín Kohan presented his first children's novel at the Clarín / Ñ cultural space

Literary critic Alejandra Rodríguez Ballester introduced him as “an intellectual who has a voice in the present, with very clear definitions in a time when many things are being called into question.” Writer and teacher Martín Kohan smiled and expressed his gratitude, with sincere modesty, and opened the conversation at the Clarín / Ñ cultural venue about El tiempo más feliz (The Happiest Time ), his first children's novel published by Siglo XXI Ediciones, which narrates his summer adventures in La Serranita, Córdoba , where his grandparents had a house that he enjoyed during the summers. The author of eleven novels, five collections of short stories , and ten collections of essays , first entered this field when faced with a publishing proposal. “Generally, good ideas come to me, luckily. I don't have to think about them,” he noted, generating a few laughs.

When asked how this first literary foray into the world of children came about, Kohan confessed that it was "from a proposal by Laura Leibiker—editor of the Siglo collection for children . I thought I couldn't do it, she thought I could, and I was very happy to be proven wrong . Writing was very rewarding," he noted. "I'm not very inclined to write about myself," he emphasized, while also adding that he tends to find himself more stimulated by imagining an outside point of view. But he noted that he achieved this by narrating his childhood.

“I'm half a century removed from my childhood. So, one recognizes and disregards oneself at the same time,” he acknowledged, while highlighting the work of Leandro Pérez, the book's illustrator, whom he defined as a co-author. Rodríguez Ballester noted that the illustrated protagonist, featured on the book's cover, is a kind of modern-day Martín Kohan, but in miniature. “When I was a kid, I saw well; I didn't wear glasses,” the writer commented with a laugh.

An interesting idea emerged from a question posed by Rodríguez Ballester: Does reconstructing childhood, then, lend itself to fiction? He highlighted a key point: “In adulthood, one opens up more and more space to reality, and imagination loses ground. In childhood, it's the other way around : imagination dominates. Recovering this was part of the driving force behind writing this book.”

Kohan said that recalling those summer afternoons for this book led him to reflect on time: “It was a different scale. Those afternoons were forever . You knew they would end. However, there's a forever effect. The experience is living as if it were forever.”

The journalist described Martín from The Happiest Time as “a curious, discovering child.” The writer drew a parallel with his present: “I was like that, and I'm not like that anymore. Now I'm not an explorer or a brave man. Although I was just a wanderer, on the scale of childhood, that was an adventure.”

The author elaborated on this and how the predisposition to discovery is lost during adulthood : “There is something in the gaze,” he noted, “a kind of disposition to wonder,” and added two allusive quotes: “Walter Benjamin, the relationship with narration, not the explanatory one but the fabulous component as a characteristic of childhood stories. César Aira: his adult novels often have the marvelous element that corresponds to the childhood disposition to wonder.”

Rodríguez Ballester asked: When was Martín Kohan the reader born? “In a classic way,” he answered, “with the Robin Hood Collection, Jules Verne, and the Billiken books,” and he pointed to a connection with The Happiest Time : “It has to do with the pleasure I found in being alone. The adventure was in solitude . I went for walks with my grandparents—I recently discovered they were my age now—and they would get tired, my sister too, and so I would do most of these walks alone. Part of the enjoyment had to do with being alone, as did reading. Sometimes I wonder what led me to what. It must be a bit of both,” he reflected, while recalling how he would take pieces of mica to the adults he met, certain he had discovered a treasure.

The conversation turned to another recent project involving the writer: the film LS83 , directed by Herman Szwarcbart, recently winner of the Critics' Award at the last BAFICI, brings together previously unpublished archive images of the Channel 9 newscast between 1973 and 1980 with texts from his book Me acuerdo .

He described it as “extraordinary. There are images of King Juan Carlos and Videla interspersed with the Spring Day celebrations in the woods of Palermo. I found it interesting to see how horror and everyday life unfold there . How does it continue? Life continued. You can even think about which of those scenes were functional to the horror and which were of resistance. There is no subordination between image and text; they illuminate each other,” he described.

When speaking about his memories and experiences, Rodríguez Ballester recalled another project in which his experiences appear, although in a lateral way: Ciencias Morales , winner of the Herralde Novel Prize (2007), is set in the National College of Buenos Aires , which the author attended during the time of the last Military Dictatorship, although it is told from the perspective of a tutor.

“I noticed that at twelve, there was an anxiety about leaving childhood and entering adolescence. I felt the opposite; I was a total idiot. Now I notice that adolescence has stretched into my 40s and 41s, ” he noted, generating more laughter from those present.

She said she first tried to narrate it from the students' point of view, but nothing interesting came out . "Until I had the idea to narrate it from the perspective of a female tutor. When I wrote it, I was 40, and I realized how young that 20-year-old tutor was. That's when I combined the fragility of her age with the context and the repressive role she played, and that's how the novel came about," she explained.

Toward the end, the discussion returned to the beginning. What Rodríguez Ballester described as "a voice in the present" emerged when asked how he views the anniversary of the military coup, which will fall in 2026, and the attacks the public university is suffering from the current government.

"It's infuriating," he defined. " While we talk about freedom, we teachers have been prohibited from speaking our minds and students have been incited to denounce us." He also criticized the idea often repeated by certain sectors as "indoctrination," characterizing this as an "insult to students as if they were empty, passive receptacles who didn't think."

“ That is an authoritarian conception of education ,” he continued, “and a rigid conception of knowledge. A good teacher brings knowledge into play in the classroom; he doesn't transmit it unidirectionally. That means subjecting it to criticism . One transmits knowledge, not doctrines. One offers oneself as a thinking subject,” he explained, prompting a torrent of applause. “Thank you for the applause, because it's not for me; it's for Argentine public education,” he concluded.

Kohan, renowned for both his work and his contributions to public debate, concluded his argument by highlighting the deterioration of current education as a result of the public defunding policies of the Javier Milei administration and gave literary examples: “Borges won the National Literature Prize. Today they would call that a job. He worked at the Miguel Cané Library. Today they would call him a municipal government. They morally extort you by saying there can't be libraries because otherwise, children in Chaco wouldn't eat. And it turns out they're suffocating the libraries, and the children don't eat. It's a fallacious argument.”

His final sentence concluded his argument and illustrated his way of being, thinking, and acting before eliciting the final wave of applause: "Children need to eat, and there must be cultural policies. If someone can't do that, they're not fit to govern a country."