Ricardo Piglia was born in Adrogué (province of Buenos Aires) in 1941. He moved to Buenos Aires in 1965, and he published his first book of short stories, La invasión [The invasion], in 1967. In 1980, he published Respiración artificial [Artificial Respiration] to international acclaim. He also published various essays and autobiographical diaries called Los diarios de Emilio Renzi [The diaries of Emilio Renzi], as well as the opera La ciudad ausente [The absent city] with composer Gerardo Gandini.

Piglia directed the journal Literatura y Sociedad, and he worked as a professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, the University of California at Davis, and Princeton University. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2014, and he died on January 6, 2017.