Argentine writer and translator Maria Kodama, widow and chief promoter of writer Jorge Luis Borges, died this Sunday at the age of 86, people close to her said.
“This friend of yours and his lawyer will take care of you. You will now enter the “great sea” with your dear Borges. Rest in peace Maria,” Maria Kodama’s legal representative, Fernando Soto, wrote on her Twitter account.
After the death of Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), María Kodama inherited the copyright of an Argentine writer whom she had met in Buenos Aires when she was still a student.
The daughter of an Argentine mother and a Japanese father, Kodama was in a civil marriage with Borges, providing significant assistance in literary work, as well as in the travels of the author of “Aleph” when he lost his sight.
Kodama has so far served as president of the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation, which he founded in 1988, being active in several legal disputes over the copyright of an Argentine writer, namely with the French publisher Gallimard.
A translator of foreign authors for publishers in Latin America, Kodama was also a professor of Argentine literature at the University of Buenos Aires.
At the age of 86, Maria Kodama died in the Argentine city of Vicente Lopez, a victim of breast cancer.