Manuel Mujica Lainez[1] (11 September 1910 – 21 April 1984) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, translator and art critic.

His parents belonged to old and aristocratic families, being descended from the founder of the city, Juan de Garay, as well as from notable men of letters of 19th century Argentina, such as Florencio Varela and Miguel Cané.

As was traditional at the time, the family spent protracted periods in Paris and London so that Manuel, known proverbially and famously as "Manucho", could become proficient in French and English.

In spite of their proud ancestry, the Mujica Lainez family was not notably well-off by this time, and he went to work at Buenos Aires' newspaper La Nación as literary and art critic.

Mujica Lainez was preeminently a narrator and enumerator of Buenos Aires, from its earliest colonial times to the present.