Chilean literature
Encyclopedia
The most famous Chilean literature has come from Nobel Prize
poets Pablo Neruda
and Gabriela Mistral
, whose homes and birthplaces are now museums that attract literary pilgrims to Chile. Neruda's Heights of Machu Picchu, Canto General and the autobiographical Memoirs are widely available in English, however Mistral's works are harder to find.
Contemporary Chilean authors have earned an international reputation in the literary world. The most famous is novelist Isabel Allende, whose House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, and Eva Luna have all been international bestsellers.
The increasingly popular Luis Sepúlveda
has written stylish short novels like The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, and combines travel writing with imaginative fiction in Full Circle: a South American Journey.
José Donoso's novel Curfew recalls the latter days of the recent military dictatorship, while Antonio Skármeta
's novel Burning Patience (drawing on Neruda's life as a Chilean icon) was the inspiration for the Oscar-winning Italian film, Il Postino
(The Postman).
's (1893–1948) creacionismo
lost its force. These poets are Gabriela Mistral
(1889–1957) and Pablo Neruda
(1904–1973), who won Nobel Prizes in literature in 1945 and 1971, respectively. The poetry of Gabriela Mistral, including Desolación (1922), Ternura (1925), Lagar (1954), is forceful and passionate. Despite its disregard for form, it possesses—in its love song to its native Chile—a deep lyricism. Pablo Neruda is one of the great poets of 20th-century Latin America. His work incorporates varied currents and shows a rich range of lyrical and epic elements. From his initial romanticism of Crepusculario (1920–1923) and Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1923–1924), he shifted to an expressionist and surrealist stage with Residencia en la tierra (1925–1931 and 1931–1935), the epic España en el corazón (1937), and Canto general (1950). Neruda's work culminates in the 5 volumes of Memorial de Isla Negra (1964). Another major Chilean poet is Nicanor Parra (born 1914), with his unique "antipoemas", Poemas y antipoemas (1954), Versos de salón (1962).
Contemporary Chilean fiction is rooted in the naturalist novels of Eduardo Barrios
(1882–1963) and Joaquín Edwards Bello
(1886–1968), and continues through the realism of Manuel Rojas
(1896–1973), an echo of whom is heard in the work of Fernando Alegría
(1918). Carlos Droguett
combined realism with a concern with form in his Eloy (1960). Enrique Lafourcade (born 1927) satirized the Rafael Leónidas Trujillo
regime in La fiesta del rey Acab (1959) and Augusto Pinochet
in "El gran taimado", a work which resulted in his self-exile for a time. The stories of Juan Emar (1893–1964), known by the pseudonym Álvaro Yáñez Bianchi, embrace both cosmopolitan and local trends. Emar's works include the story collection Diez (1937) and the unfinished posthumous novel Umbral (1996), which is perhaps the most daring work in 20th-century Chilean fiction. José Donoso
(born 1924) is another major 20th-century writer; his works include El lugar sin límites (1966) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (1970), which described the fallen world of Chile's bourgeoisie. Donoso's Casa de campo (1978) shows his great power of imagination. Another 20th century novelist is Jorge Edwards (born 1931), author of the novels El peso de la noche (1965), and Las máscaras (1967).
is considered Chile's last great writer. His posthumous work 2666 is the culmination of his literary style. Nevertheless, there are many other writers who deserve a mention for their contribution to Chilean literature. The police novels of Roberto Ampuero
, with the Cuban detective Cayetano Brulé as protagonista, are well-known. Another noted novelist is Jorge Marchant Lazcano
, whose works combine history and customs. Alberto Fuguet
has contributed to the internationalization of Chilean fiction with works like Mala Onda and Tinta Roja. Sebastián Edwards
is known for his best-selling spy thriller El misterio de las Tanias. Hernán Rivera Letelier
writes about northern Chile and the lives of miners. Marcela Serrano
writes works with a feminist slant that sometimes involve the police, as in Nuestra señora de la Soledad. Novelist Isabel Allende
is also well-regarded internationally. Her books sell well in United States and Europe and have been translated into several languages. The fiction of Diamela Eltit
breaks the traditional novel patterns and is characterized by marginal characters submerged in a seedy world. The new generation of Chilean fiction writers also includes Roberto Ampuero
, Marcela Serrano
, Hernán Rivera Letelier
, Pablo Azócar, Pía Barros, Jorge Calvo, Gregory Cohen, Jaime Collyer
, Gonzalo Contreras
, Marco Antonio de la Parra, Ana María del Río, Ramón Díaz Eterovic, Lilian Elphick, Martín Faunes, Arturo Marchant, Diego Muñoz Valenzuela, Darío Oses, Antonio Ostornol, Alejandra Rojas, Luis Sepúlveda
, and José Leandro Urbina. Young Chilean writers (born in the 1960s) include Alejandra Costamagna, Nona Fernández, Andrea Jeftanovic
, Alvaro Bisama, and Roberto Brodsky
.
Major poets include Óscar Hahn
, Raúl Zurita
, Teresa Calderón, Andrés Morales
, Omar Lara, Waldo Rojas, Juan Luis Martínez, Sergio Badilla Castillo
, Juan Cameron, and Malú Urriola. Other important poets come from the Quercipinión group, which has contributed to the renewal of poetry in the south of Chile. Gonzalo Osses Vilches and Santiago Azar y Damsi Figueroa are some of the freshest and most interesting voices in Chilean literature. Poets Germán Carrasco and Javier Bello are known for their visual and linguistic power. In recent years Chilean poetry has gained new vigor thanks to the emergence of a large number of poets who stand out in their powerful language and their avant-garde aesthetic that incorporates elements from pop music, film, visual arts, and philosophy. These poets include Héctor Hernández Montecinos, Camilo Brodsky, Diego Ramírez, Marcela Saldaño, Marcelo Guajardo Thomas, Carlos Henrickson, Paula Ilabaca, Marcela Parra, Pablo Paredes
, Felipe Ruiz, and Galo Ghigliotto.
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
poets Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
and Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945...
, whose homes and birthplaces are now museums that attract literary pilgrims to Chile. Neruda's Heights of Machu Picchu, Canto General and the autobiographical Memoirs are widely available in English, however Mistral's works are harder to find.
Contemporary Chilean authors have earned an international reputation in the literary world. The most famous is novelist Isabel Allende, whose House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, and Eva Luna have all been international bestsellers.
The increasingly popular Luis Sepúlveda
Luis Sepúlveda
Luis Sepúlveda is a Chilean writer, film director, journalist and political activist.- Life :Luis Sepùlveda was born in Ovalle, Limarí Province...
has written stylish short novels like The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, and combines travel writing with imaginative fiction in Full Circle: a South American Journey.
José Donoso's novel Curfew recalls the latter days of the recent military dictatorship, while Antonio Skármeta
Antonio Skármeta
Antonio Skármeta is a Chilean writer, born November 7, 1940 in Antofagasta, Chile. He was born to Croatian immigrants from the Adriatic island of Brač, region of Dalmatia....
's novel Burning Patience (drawing on Neruda's life as a Chilean icon) was the inspiration for the Oscar-winning Italian film, Il Postino
Il Postino
Il Postino is a 1994 Italian film directed by Michael Radford. The film was originally released in the U.S. as The Postman, a straight translation of the Italian title...
(The Postman).
Twentieth century
Two great Latin American poets appeared in Chile at the time when Vicente HuidobroVicente Huidobro
Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández was a Chilean poet born to an aristocratic family. He was an exponent of the artistic movement called Creacionismo , which held that a poet should bring life to the things he or she writes about, rather than just describe them.Huidobro was born into a wealthy...
's (1893–1948) creacionismo
Creacionismo
Creationism was a literary movement, initiated by Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro around 1912. Creationism is based on the idea of a poem as a truly new thing, created by the author for the sake of itself — that is, not to praise another thing, not to please the reader, not even to be...
lost its force. These poets are Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945...
(1889–1957) and Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
(1904–1973), who won Nobel Prizes in literature in 1945 and 1971, respectively. The poetry of Gabriela Mistral, including Desolación (1922), Ternura (1925), Lagar (1954), is forceful and passionate. Despite its disregard for form, it possesses—in its love song to its native Chile—a deep lyricism. Pablo Neruda is one of the great poets of 20th-century Latin America. His work incorporates varied currents and shows a rich range of lyrical and epic elements. From his initial romanticism of Crepusculario (1920–1923) and Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1923–1924), he shifted to an expressionist and surrealist stage with Residencia en la tierra (1925–1931 and 1931–1935), the epic España en el corazón (1937), and Canto general (1950). Neruda's work culminates in the 5 volumes of Memorial de Isla Negra (1964). Another major Chilean poet is Nicanor Parra (born 1914), with his unique "antipoemas", Poemas y antipoemas (1954), Versos de salón (1962).
Contemporary Chilean fiction is rooted in the naturalist novels of Eduardo Barrios
Eduardo Barrios
- Overview :After his father’s death, at the age of 5 his family moved to Lima until the age of 15 where he was the victim of harassment by his classmates. After high school he joined the Chilean Military School but quit before graduating as an officer. He spent much of his young adulthood...
(1882–1963) and Joaquín Edwards Bello
Joaquín Edwards Bello
Joaquín Edwards Bello was a Chilean writer and journalist. He was of British descent.-Life:Edwards Bello was born in Valparaíso, one of the most important ports in Chile. His family, the Edwards, is still one of the most influential in the country.Joaquín studied at The Mackay School and later at...
(1886–1968), and continues through the realism of Manuel Rojas
Manuel Rojas
Commander Manuel Rojas , Commander of the Puerto Rican Liberation Army, was one of the main leaders of the Grito de Lares uprising against Spanish rule in Puerto Rico.-Early years:...
(1896–1973), an echo of whom is heard in the work of Fernando Alegría
Fernando Alegría
Fernando Alegría was a Chilean poet, writer, literary critic and scholar.-Biography:Alegría was born in Santiago, Chile and grew up in the Independencia barrio of the city. Poets from this barrio include Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra and Volodia Teitelboim.He received an M.A. from Bowling Green...
(1918). Carlos Droguett
Carlos Droguett
Carlos Droguett was a Chilean writer. In 1970 he won the Chilean National Prize for Literature and the Premio Alfaguara de Novela....
combined realism with a concern with form in his Eloy (1960). Enrique Lafourcade (born 1927) satirized the Rafael Leónidas Trujillo
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina , nicknamed El Jefe , ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. He officially served as president from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952, otherwise ruling as an unelected military strongman...
regime in La fiesta del rey Acab (1959) and Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
in "El gran taimado", a work which resulted in his self-exile for a time. The stories of Juan Emar (1893–1964), known by the pseudonym Álvaro Yáñez Bianchi, embrace both cosmopolitan and local trends. Emar's works include the story collection Diez (1937) and the unfinished posthumous novel Umbral (1996), which is perhaps the most daring work in 20th-century Chilean fiction. José Donoso
José Donoso
José Donoso Yáñez was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he claimed his exile was also a form of...
(born 1924) is another major 20th-century writer; his works include El lugar sin límites (1966) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (1970), which described the fallen world of Chile's bourgeoisie. Donoso's Casa de campo (1978) shows his great power of imagination. Another 20th century novelist is Jorge Edwards (born 1931), author of the novels El peso de la noche (1965), and Las máscaras (1967).
Twenty-first century
Roberto BolañoRoberto Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes , and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes...
is considered Chile's last great writer. His posthumous work 2666 is the culmination of his literary style. Nevertheless, there are many other writers who deserve a mention for their contribution to Chilean literature. The police novels of Roberto Ampuero
Roberto Ampuero
Roberto Ampuero is a Chilean author, columnist, and a university professor. His first novel ¿Quién mató a Kristián Kustermann? was published in 1993 and in it he introduced his private eye, Cayetano Brulé, winning the Revista del Libro prize of El Mercurio. Since then the detective has appeared...
, with the Cuban detective Cayetano Brulé as protagonista, are well-known. Another noted novelist is Jorge Marchant Lazcano
Jorge Marchant Lazcano
Jorge Marchant Lazcano is a Chilean writer, playwright, screenwriter, novelist and journalist. He was born in Santiago, on March 9, 1950.He is the son of Jorge Marchant Montalva and María Ester Lazcano Cuevas...
, whose works combine history and customs. Alberto Fuguet
Alberto Fuguet
Alberto Fuguet de Goyeneche is a popular Chilean writer, journalist, film critic and film director who rose to critical prominence in the 1990s as part of the movement known as the New Chilean Narrative. Although he was born in Santiago, he spent his first 13 years of life in Encino, California...
has contributed to the internationalization of Chilean fiction with works like Mala Onda and Tinta Roja. Sebastián Edwards
Sebastian Edwards
Sebastian Edwards is an international economist, professor, speaker, and consultant. He is currently the Henry Ford II Professor of International Business Economics at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles...
is known for his best-selling spy thriller El misterio de las Tanias. Hernán Rivera Letelier
Hernán Rivera Letelier
Hernán Rivera Letelier is a Chilean novelist. Until the age of 11 he lived in the Algorta saltpeter mining town. When it was closed down, he and his family moved to Antofagasta, where his mother died. His siblings went to live with his aunts. He stayed in Antofagasta, alone, until he was about 11....
writes about northern Chile and the lives of miners. Marcela Serrano
Marcela Serrano
Marcela Serrano is an award-winning Chilean novelist. In 1994, her first novel won the Literary Prize in Santiago, and her second book won the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for women writers in Spanish...
writes works with a feminist slant that sometimes involve the police, as in Nuestra señora de la Soledad. Novelist Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean writer with American citizenship. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts , which have been commercially successful...
is also well-regarded internationally. Her books sell well in United States and Europe and have been translated into several languages. The fiction of Diamela Eltit
Diamela Eltit
Diamela Eltit is a writer and a Spanish professor from Chile. She currently holds a teaching appointment at New York University, where she teaches creative writing....
breaks the traditional novel patterns and is characterized by marginal characters submerged in a seedy world. The new generation of Chilean fiction writers also includes Roberto Ampuero
Roberto Ampuero
Roberto Ampuero is a Chilean author, columnist, and a university professor. His first novel ¿Quién mató a Kristián Kustermann? was published in 1993 and in it he introduced his private eye, Cayetano Brulé, winning the Revista del Libro prize of El Mercurio. Since then the detective has appeared...
, Marcela Serrano
Marcela Serrano
Marcela Serrano is an award-winning Chilean novelist. In 1994, her first novel won the Literary Prize in Santiago, and her second book won the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for women writers in Spanish...
, Hernán Rivera Letelier
Hernán Rivera Letelier
Hernán Rivera Letelier is a Chilean novelist. Until the age of 11 he lived in the Algorta saltpeter mining town. When it was closed down, he and his family moved to Antofagasta, where his mother died. His siblings went to live with his aunts. He stayed in Antofagasta, alone, until he was about 11....
, Pablo Azócar, Pía Barros, Jorge Calvo, Gregory Cohen, Jaime Collyer
Jaime Collyer
Jaime Collyer is a Chilean writer, born in Santiago, Chile in 1955 who became part of a generation of writers known as the "Nueva narrativa chilena" or the New Chilean Narrative...
, Gonzalo Contreras
Gonzalo Contreras
Gonzalo Contreras is a Chilean writer. In 1991 he won the first edition of El Mercurios Concurso de Novela Inédita with La ciudad anterior. He went on to publish El nadador in 1994 and El gran mal in 1998...
, Marco Antonio de la Parra, Ana María del Río, Ramón Díaz Eterovic, Lilian Elphick, Martín Faunes, Arturo Marchant, Diego Muñoz Valenzuela, Darío Oses, Antonio Ostornol, Alejandra Rojas, Luis Sepúlveda
Luis Sepúlveda
Luis Sepúlveda is a Chilean writer, film director, journalist and political activist.- Life :Luis Sepùlveda was born in Ovalle, Limarí Province...
, and José Leandro Urbina. Young Chilean writers (born in the 1960s) include Alejandra Costamagna, Nona Fernández, Andrea Jeftanovic
Andrea Jeftanovic
Andrea Jeftanovic is a Chilean author, sociologist and academic.Jeftanovic was three when the September 11, 1973 Chilean military coup took place and she grew up under Augusto Pinochet's military regime...
, Alvaro Bisama, and Roberto Brodsky
Roberto Brodsky
Roberto Brodsky Baudet is a Chilean novelist and screenwriter. He has written four novels, several film and theater scripts, and over 250 articles published in national newspapers and magazines. Baudet was awarded the 2007 Jaén Prize for Best Novel and the 2009 Martin Nuez Award, both for his 2008...
.
Major poets include Óscar Hahn
Oscar Hahn
Óscar Arturo Hahn Garcés is a Chilean writer and poet. Known in Chile as one of the writers of the Generation of the 70s , Hahn studied at the Pedagogical Institute of Santiago during his youth...
, Raúl Zurita
Raúl Zurita
Raúl Zurita Canessa is a Chilean poet and anthologist. He won the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 2000.-Biography:Raúl Zurita Lastarria studied at the Lyceum...
, Teresa Calderón, Andrés Morales
Andrés Morales
Juan Andrés Morales Milohnic is a poet and Chilean writer. He won the Pablo Neruda National Prize in 2001, and was born in Santiago, Chile in 1962. He has a Ph. D. in literature...
, Omar Lara, Waldo Rojas, Juan Luis Martínez, Sergio Badilla Castillo
Sergio Badilla Castillo
Sergio Badilla Castillo is a Chilean poet and the founder of poetic transrealism in contemporary poetry...
, Juan Cameron, and Malú Urriola. Other important poets come from the Quercipinión group, which has contributed to the renewal of poetry in the south of Chile. Gonzalo Osses Vilches and Santiago Azar y Damsi Figueroa are some of the freshest and most interesting voices in Chilean literature. Poets Germán Carrasco and Javier Bello are known for their visual and linguistic power. In recent years Chilean poetry has gained new vigor thanks to the emergence of a large number of poets who stand out in their powerful language and their avant-garde aesthetic that incorporates elements from pop music, film, visual arts, and philosophy. These poets include Héctor Hernández Montecinos, Camilo Brodsky, Diego Ramírez, Marcela Saldaño, Marcelo Guajardo Thomas, Carlos Henrickson, Paula Ilabaca, Marcela Parra, Pablo Paredes
Pablo Paredes
Pablo Paredes was a Petty Officer Third Class and weapons-control technician in the United States Navy who refused to board the USS Bonhomme Richard as it deployed to the Persian Gulf, December 6, 2004 as part of the Operation Iraqi Freedom.During his 2002 tour in Japan, Paredes met several people...
, Felipe Ruiz, and Galo Ghigliotto.