Roberto Godofredo Christophersen Arlt was born in 1900 to immigrant parents in Buenos Aires, into a poor working-class family in which Spanish was, at best, the second language. His father, Karl or Carlos Arlt, was a glassblower from Poznañ, Prussia, now in Poland, and his mother, Ekatherine, was from Trieste, formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today in Italy. He had a difficult relationship with his family – in his fiction, fathers are often absent, dead or violent – and spent his formative years in the lower-class district of Flores where he experienced an unconventional education that included little formal schooling, expulsion from the armed forces, a series of semi-permanent or failed jobs, and an intense engagement with the vibrant life of the city around him. Buenos…
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Citation: Bollig, Ben. "Roberto Arlt". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 July 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12219, accessed 23 November 2024.]
