Marcos Aguinis (born January 15, 1935 in Córdoba, Argentina) is an Argentine neurosurgeon and writer.
Aguinis’ father immigrated to Buenos Aires from Bessarabia in 1928 and soon moved in with relatives living in Cruz del Eje in the province of Córdoba. As a schoolchild, Marcos Aguinis suffered discrimination from classmates and some teachers because of his Jewish heritage. During the persecution of Jews in Germany, all of his remaining family members in Europe were killed. After his bar mitzvah, he began to study literature and religion intensively. He borrowed books about the Bible and Israel from the public library. Among other works, he read Stefan Zweig, Julio Nin y Silva’s “History of the Religion of Israel,” Emil Ludwig’s “The Son of Man,” “Muhammad and the Koran” by the Spaniard Rafael Cansinos Assens, and Ernest Renan’s “The Life of Jesus.” Reading Renan’s book marked the beginning of his doubts about his faith. Today, Aguini is an agnostic.
He began writing short stories while still at school. After finishing school, he studied psychiatry, neurology, and psychoanalysis. At the age of 23, he received a scholarship to study neurosurgery in Buenos Aires. He continued his medical and psychiatric studies at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in France, as well as in Freiburg im Breisgau and Cologne with the help of a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. After returning from Europe, he earned his doctorate at the University of Córdoba and initially worked as a neurosurgeon at the Southern Regional Clinic. During this time, he published his first short stories.
Aguinis published his first book in 1963. Since then, he has published numerous novels, essay collections, short story collections, and two biographies. His articles in newspapers and magazines in Latin America, the United States, and Europe cover a wide range of diverse topics. He has given numerous lectures and offered courses in Germany, Spain, the United States, France, Israel, Russia, Italy, and almost all Latin American countries.
During the dictatorship in Argentina, the distribution of Aguinis’s works was subject to restrictions. Some of his works could only be published abroad and were brought into the country illegally.
When Argentina returned to democracy in December 1983, Aguinis was appointed Secretary of State and then Secretary of Culture. He organized PRONDEC, a national program for the democratization of culture, supported by UNESCO and the UN. He launched intensive activities to raise public awareness of their rights, responsibilities, and opportunities for developing a genuine democracy. For his work, he was nominated by UNESCO for the Peace Education Prize.