Hernan Diaz is an Argentine-American writer of literary fiction. He is best known for his novels Trust (2022) and In the Distance (2017). Trust won the 2023 Pulitzer and the 2022 Kirkus Prize for Fiction.
Hernan Diaz was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After a military coup in the country, his family moved to Sweden when he was two years old. They returned to Argentina in 1983 after democracy was restored. He started writing stories as a child. "I pretended to write before I knew how," he said.
Diaz earned a degree in literature from the University of Buenos Aires. He then moved to London, earning a master's degree from King's College. In 1999, he moved to New York and earned a Ph.D. from New York University. He now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.
His first book, Borges, Between History and Eternity (2012), explored themes in Borges's writing. His debut novel, In the Distance (2017), was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. It also won the Saroyan International Prize for Writing. In 2019, Diaz received the Whiting Award.
Trust (2022), Diaz's second novel, is set in New York finance. It consists of four interlinked narratives: a book, a memoir, an autobiography, and a diary. Each version presents a conflicting account of the life of a financier and his wife. The structure invites the reader to question what is true.
In the first part of the novel, a financier named Benjamin Rask emerges unscathed from the 1929 crash. His wife, Helen, falls ill and dies in a sanatorium. A second narrative presents Andrew Bevel's attempt to defend his late wife's legacy. In the third section, a ghostwriter named Ida Partenza investigates Mildred Bevel's life.
The final section reveals Mildred's own diary, which alters the reader's understanding of all that has gone before. "Finance," she writes, "was a dark fuel for me.
Hernan Diaz wanted to "write about extreme wealth and capital." Trust was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022 and named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times and the Washington Post. In 2024, The New York Times called it one of the 100 best books of the century.
A television adaptation of Trust is in development. Kate Winslet will star and produce, with Todd Haynes attached to direct.
His stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Harper's, The Atlantic, Granta, The Yale Review, Playboy, McSweeney's, and elsewhere.
Photo credit: www.hernandiaz.net
