Ricardo Piglia is one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers, known equally for his fiction (several collections of short stories; the novels "Artificial Respiration", 1980; "The Absent City", 1992; "Money to Burn", 1997) and his criticism (1986 "Criticism and Fiction", 1999 "Brief Forms", 2005 "The Last Reader". Piglia has received a number of awards, including the "Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras 2005", "Premio Planeta 1997", and "Premio Casa de las Américas 1967". Piglia resided for a number of years in the United States, where he taught Latin American literature at Princeton University, but in 2011, after retirement, he decided to return with his wife to his home country. In 2013 he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Piglia died on January 6, 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina after struggling for a long time with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.