My Favorite Writers and Thinkers

Every year or so, I get wildly enthusiastic about a writer and a philosopher (thinker, literary critic) and read everything by them. My intellectual life started in 1999, and here is my list of formative authors for each year. The first in every line is a writer and the other one is a thinker / critic / philosopher.

1999: Juan Rulfo and Sarmiento
2000: Benito Perez Galdos and Octavio Paz (I don’t get Paz’s poetry and only read his essays)
2001: Leopoldo Alas and Fernandez Retamar
2002: Larra and Benedict Anderson
2003: Juan Goytisolo and Antony Smith
2004: Juan Marse and Fredric Jameson
2005: Mario Vargas Llosa and Ernst Curtius
2006: Espido Freire and Terry Eagleton
2007: Pardo Bazan and Foucault
2008: Munoz Molina and Alain Badiou
2009: Edmundo Paz Soldan and Giorgio Agamben
2010: Rosa Montero and Zygmunt Bauman
2011: Almudena Grandes and Jonathan Mayhew
2012: Benjamin Prado and Slavoj Zizek
2013: Andrés Trapiello and Helen Graham
2014: Rafael Chirbes and Philip Bobbitt