‘Mafalda’ original publisher Ediciones de la Flor shuts down

Long-established company Ediciones de la Flor, the original publishers of Argentine authors like Mafalda’s Quino, Roberto Fontanarrosa, and Rodolfo Walsh, announced it will cease operations this year.  The 60-year old company informed the decision through a sign on its stand at the ongoing 50h Buenos Aires Book Fair, which runs April 23 to May 11. De la Flor had a stand in the Fair ever since its creation.  “This is our last fair, and our last year operating,” the sign read. “Publishing books in Argentina was always a hurdling race, and this is as far as we can keep on jumping.”  The publishing company mentioned among the reasons the loss of several, long-selling authors at the hands of corporate publishers, together with “technology and the state of the economy.” Cultural landmarks Founded in 1966 and run by Daniel Divinsky and Ana María “Kuki” Miller, De la Flor signed several authors that would become both cultural landmarks and best-selling hits, like Fontanarrosa and Rodolfo Fogwill, whose first novel Los pichiciegos tapped into the Malvinas War issue in 1983 and became a classic.  De la Flor also published — together with Lumen — the first edition of Umberto Eco’s bestseller The Name of the Rose. Divinsky and Miller were imprisoned during the dictatorship for publishing the children’s book Cinco  Dedos, deemed as “subversive” by censors. The couple spent four months in prison and went into exile to Venezuela with their son after their liberation, and kept running the company from abroad until the return of democracy in 1983. “In 1975 we participated in the first Buenos Aires International Book Fair and, even though its editors were imprisoned or in exile, we were present at all the fairs that have taken place since then…”, the sign reads. You may be interested in: 50th Buenos Aires Book Fair opens with turbulent inauguration The couple divorced in 2009 and Divinsky withdrew from the company in 2015.  Last year, the heirs of the Mafalda author Quino decided to sell the rights of his work to Penguin Random House, which meant a significant blow to the independent publisher’s business, which had released Quino’s work since 1970.  De la Flor had already lost the rights to the works of other long-sellers like Roberto Fontanarrosa and Walsh to mogul publisher Grupo Planeta. “Our most important authors have been our family, but their heirs have chosen other paths,” read the sign.  “We say goodbye, knowing that our legacy lives on in the new publishing houses founded by young people who grew up with our books, and that those books we published with conviction and love all these years will remain in the libraries and memories of our readers,” they wrote.  “Thank you for being part of these 60 years of our history.”