Daniel Divinsky, the creator of Ediciones de la Flor and historic editor of "Mafalda" and Fontanarrosa, has died.

Lawyer and editor Daniel Divinsky passed away recently from an illness that plagued him for decades. He had been the driving force behind the publication of Mafalda , the comic strip by Quino , which had been initially published by Jorge Álvarez publishing house, but became a bestseller under his leadership. Divinsky died almost simultaneously with the transfer of those works to an international group.

Trained as a lawyer at the University of Buenos Aires , he once said that he would have studied literature, but for a middle-class family in the late 1950s, engineering or law were disciplines that more certainly promised a professional future. So, at just 15 years old, he applied to law school and graduated five years later with his diploma with honors. He was a lawyer. But books were waiting for him and had already tempted him .

"Daniel was a great supporter of new publishers and independent publishing in general. And he was always on top of everything ," Constanza Brunet, editorial director of Marea, now tells Clarín . She adds: "Shortly after starting Marea, he approached me at a fair and told me he liked what I was publishing . From that day on, he always supported me, and we became friends. A huge loss for all of us."

Daniel Divinsky, editor of "Mafalda" and a key figure in the Argentine publishing market for more than half a century, has passed away. He was also a friend of Marea. We will always remember him with affection and respect. RIP ⚘️🌹 https://t.co/8Ucb8CF8Ss

— Marea Editorial (@mareaeditorial) August 1, 2025

While studying, he had met the editor Jorge Álvarez, who entrusted some tasks to the teenager who at that time was Divinsky .

He himself recalled it this way in an interview: "For Jorge Álvarez I did translations , corrected proofs of dozens of books and was in charge of the editions of Flaubert's Dictionary of Commonplaces , translated by Alberto Ciria. I also supervised Rodolfo Walsh's translation of Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary , which was published in Spanish for the first time and then ended up being pirated to the point of exhaustion. I put the words in alphabetical order in the order given to them by their English spelling," he listed. Minor tasks, perhaps. An editing school, perhaps.

"We are sure that today the world is a little uglier, because we will have fewer people taking risks in pursuit of a dream and without a doubt the Argentine publishing history is in mourning ," Juan Manuel Pampín, president of the Argentine Book Chamber, now tells Clarín .

When he graduated, he opted for law (what other option did he have?) and practiced that profession for a decade . “I didn't like law at all, so I started a graduate course in sociology. I was in that class when a coup d'état occurred. I was left with no future. Instead of getting depressed, my partner and I came up with the idea of opening a bookstore . We asked our parents how much money they could lend us: one hundred and fifty dollars each. But there was no way we could rent anything for that amount,” he recalled. The books were still there.

Álvarez himself envisioned a joint publishing house . After all, the junior lawyer had both enthusiasm and ability. Pirí Lugones, Leopoldo Lugones's granddaughter and a friend of both, considered the project ambitious. Jokingly, she told them: "You want a great publishing house." The name was already ready.

So in 1967, Divinsky created Ediciones de la Flor , which would be joined in 1970 by Ana María "Kuki" Miler , who would later become his partner and who today leads the company that gave book form to the work of Rodolfo Walsh, Fontanarrosa, Caloi, Liniers, Sendra, Maitena, Nik, among many other authors who took their first steps with him.

De la Flor sowed readers everywhere. Juan Manuel Pampín, for example, and himself an editor from Corregidor, recalls this aspect for Clarín : "Daniel, starting with the publishing house he created with his partner Kuki Miller, made us read many things , he showed us new worlds. Along with other editors (Jorge Alvarez, Boris Spivacow, my old man, among others) , he was part of a special breed of editors who didn't always publish what the market dictated, but rather what they believed in."

Each of those men in the edition Pampín lists had "their" success, that unforgettable one. Mafalda was a milestone in Divnsky's career . "With Mafalda, we made initial runs of two hundred thousand copies . And they sold," he recalled in an interview with Letras Libres , as if his disbelief still remained half a century later.

Quino had come to them after parting ways with his previous publisher due to financial difficulties. "Why don't you start making Mafalda?" he asked. "That was a Copernican investment for a publishing house that published poems by Tennessee Williams and went on to publish print runs of thousands of copies that sold in an afternoon ," he said.

Regarding how Quino brought Mafalda and her universe to life, he revealed on another occasion: "Quino traveled by public transport and wrote down, in a little notebook, phrases he heard from people." And regarding his view of the world, he said: "He was a very politically committed man; he grew up in a home of Spanish republicans where they were communists, he had a communist aunt who sold bonds from that party's famous financial campaign to raise funds many years ago. He was never a member of any political party, obviously he was always an absolutely democratic guy ."

During the military dictatorship , a children's book got them into serious trouble. The cover of the book, "Five Fingers, " featured an image of a raised fist : "Although no one had intended it for ideological purposes, the image was considered an apology for subversion aimed at children," he once recounted in an interview. It was the fist, it was the catalog, it was the violence of those years.

He was kidnapped with his wife and son Emilio, who was just over two years old at the time : "Kuki and I were imprisoned in a place that had been a place of torture. At least they allowed our family to bring us food and books." They were rescued from the jaws of death thanks to pressure from international publishers' associations. They escaped into exile in Venezuela, from which they only returned in 1983 , after the return of democracy.

Roberto Fontanarrosa became the publishing house's other pillar. Although he had published a book in Rosario, it was Divinsky who transformed his career.

Deep sorrow for the death of Daniel Divinsky. And a great loss for Argentine culture and books. Here, during one of his many visits to #Los7locos . Daniel Divinsky in Los siete locos https://t.co/azAGezfvZC via @YouTube

— Cristina Mucci (@Cristina_Mucci) August 1, 2025

"He was totally unknown. I got his mailing address and sent him a letter. I proposed doing a book ; he sent me a huge amount of material, very disorganized and then I said: "Since nobody knows him, let's do a big book" and we called it Who is Fontanarrosa? , with a band that said: "Answer on page 3" . And it said that Fontanarrosa was a graphic humorist from Rosario and that he collaborated with the magazine Hortensia and many other magazines, buying them, a text that of course he wrote. That was the beginning of a story that had more than eighty books , including graphic humor (many of which we proposed to him), plus the Inodoro Pereyra and Boogie, the Oily Series. Then we started with what was his second book of short stories, The World Has Lived Wrong , which he sent to me in Caracas, I read it, corrected it and decided to publish it and it appeared when we returned, at the end from '83," he recalled in an interview.

Back in Argentina, he regained his position at the publishing house and resumed his work as an editor . The first book he published upon his return was Fogwill's Los Pichiciegos . He knew how to look and he knew how to read. "I figured that if I liked something, surely 1,500 or 2,000 other crazy people who had the same weakness as me would like it," he defined his outlook in an interview.

During those early years of a fragile republican system, he also committed himself to the restoration of cultural institutions as the intervenor of LR3 Radio Belgrano.

He also directed the magazine Plural , published by the Plural Foundation for Democratic Participation, and was a member of the Argentine Book Chamber , as a member of the Board of Directors from 1988 to 2008 and as vice president between 2000 and 2002.

He often recounted his successes as an editor, but sometimes, also his failures, those books he let pass and that became massive : "There are two cases: a book that I rejected and that later became a huge worldwide success but that wasn't for De la Flor and I'm glad that it did well for the author. It was Tales for Veronica , by Poldy Bird . The author was kind enough to invite me to a huge party she threw for the tenth edition. Afterwards, Federico Andahazi , whom I met at a Planeta Prize, told me that he had called the publisher to propose The Anatomist before all the scandal, and that the secretary had told him that we weren't accepting originals, which was true. It's a book that I really liked and I would have liked to publish."

A decade ago, he sold his stake in the publishing house to Miler and retired from Ediciones de la Flor, although he remained active writing articles and participating on social media. In 2013, the Buenos Aires City Legislature declared him "Outstanding Cultural Personality" of the city by unanimous vote of its members. In 2011, he received the Cultural Achievement Award from Ñ magazine.