David Unger

David Unger (born 6 November 1950) is a Guatemalan author and translator.

He was born on November 6, 1950 in Guatemala City. In 1955, he immigrated to Hialeah, Florida with his parents.

Unger graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst with a B.A. and received an MFA in 1975 from Columbia University.

Unger teaches at the City College of New York and is the International Rep for the Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara. In 2014 he was awarded Guatemala's prestigious Miguel Angel Asturias National Literature Prize for lifetime achievement. He is the author of Moley Mole/Topo Pecoso (Greenseed Publishing, 2020); Sleeping With the Light On (Groundwood Books, 2020); Vivir en el maldito tropico (F y G Editores, 2016); The Mastermind (Akashic Books, 2016; Planeta Mexico: 2015, Polish, Arabic, Italian, Macedonian, Turkish, etc.),Para mi, eres divina (Guatemala: Editorial Cultura, 2014); La Casita: Forgetting Spanish (Mexico: CIDCLI, 2014),El precio de la fuga (Guatemala: F y G Editores, 2013), La Casita (Mexico: CIDCLI, 2012), The Price of Escape (New York: Akashic Books, 2011), Para mi, eres divina (Mexico: Random House Mondadori, 2011), Ni chicha, ni limonada (F y G Editores, 2009, 2019; Recorded Books, 2010), Life in the Damn Tropics (Wisconsin University Press, 2004), which has been published in Spanish (Mexico: Random House, 2004) and Chinese (Taipei: Locus Publishers, 2006), and Neither Caterpillar Nor Butterfly (New York: Es Que Somos Muy Pobres Press, 1985). He has translated more than a dozen books, including three books by Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchu (Groundwood Books), two books by Cuban Teresa Cardenas (Groundwood Books), The Love You Promised Me by Mexican Silvia Molina (Curbstone Press), First Love by Mexican Elena Garro (Curbstone Press) and The Dead Leaves by Mexican Barbara Jacobs (Curbstone Press). In 2019 he will publish his translation of Stories We Were Never Told (PenguinRandomHouse).He is the editor and the main translator of Nicanor Parra's Antipoems: New and Selected (New Directions), the most complete collection of this important Chilean poet, and contributed to Enrique Lihn's The Dark Room (New York: New Directions, 1978) and Roque Dalton's Short Hours of the Night (Willimantic: Curbstone Press). Though he writes in English, he is considered among Guatemala's most important living writers..