La vida toda

This anthology collects thirteen long non-fiction texts, of which twelve are long-term reports published in the 21st century. Six were written by women. They all came to light after two events that marked their beginning: the holocaust of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001 and the appearance of those disembodied forces known as social networks. This reality perhaps explains the number of texts that I included without realizing that they speak obliquely or directly about death. On the other hand, the preponderance of foreign reports reflects a preference of mine, but also speaks of a post 9/11, post Atocha, post Bombay world. The world is now one, united by terror. But also, it is obvious, due to climate change and pandemics, migration and our consequent cosmopolitanism, the abolition of distances in the virtual universe, Zoom, and an obsession with traveling that was already coming in the last century but that Today he acquires symptoms of fever. You have to know the world before it ends. This selection does not represent the twelve greatest non-fiction narrators of our times: that criterion no longer exists, nor would there be any way to choose them given the immensity of the current chronicle panorama. There is not even here a selection of the chroniclers that I like the most, because in that case there would have to be these and a dozen others. I've looked for storytellers who are talking about new topics, or who are talking about timeless topics with a new approach and style, or who, in some cases, have simply achieved reporting prodigies, sticking to the classic rules, under conditions of great difficulty. And I have looked for topics that produce amazement in readers.