Latin American literature - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Latin American literature consists of the oral

Oral literature

Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do...

and written

Writing

Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...

literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

of Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

(and the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

) in several language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

s, particularly in Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

, and indigenous languages of the Americas

Indigenous languages of the Americas

Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...

. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the international success of the style known as magical realism. As such, the region's literature is often associated solely with this style (and its most famous exponent, Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...

). This largely obscures a rich and complex tradition of literary production that dates back many centuries.

Pre-Columbian literature

Pre-Columbian cultures were primarily oral, though the Aztecs and Mayans, for instance, produced elaborate codices

Aztec codices

Aztec codices are books written by pre-Columbian and colonial-era Aztecs. These codices provide some of the best primary sources for Aztec culture....

. Oral accounts of mythological and religious beliefs were also sometimes recorded after the arrival of European colonizers, as was the case with the Popol Vuh

Popol Vuh

Popol Vuh is a corpus of mytho-historical narratives of the Post Classic Quiché kingdom in Guatemala's western highlands. The title translates as "Book of the Community," "Book of Counsel," or more literally as "Book of the People."...

. Moreover, a tradition of oral narrative survives to this day, for instance among the Quechua-speaking population of Peru and the Quiché of Guatemala.

Colonial literature

From the very moment when Europeans encountered the New World, early explorers and conquistadores produced written accounts and crónicas

Crónicas

Crónicas is a 2004 Ecuadorian thriller film, written and directed by Sebastián Cordero. The film was produced by Guillermo Del Toro, director of Pan's Labyrinth, and Alfonso Cuarón, director of Y Tu Mama Tambien...

of their experience, such as Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

's letters or Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a conquistador, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards for Hernán Cortés, himself serving as a rodelero under Cortés.-Early life:...

's description of the conquest of Mexico. At times, colonial practices stirred a lively debate about the ethics of colonization and the status of the indigenous peoples, as reflected for instance in Bartolomé de las Casas

Bartolomé de Las Casas

Bartolomé de las Casas O.P. was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians"...

's Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies.

Mestizos and natives also contributed to the body of colonial literature. Authors such as El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Guaman Poma wrote accounts of the Spanish conquest that show a perspective that often contrasts with the colonizers' accounts.

During the colonial period, written culture was often in the hands of the church, within which context Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote memorable poetry and philosophical essays. Towards the end of the 18th Century and the beginning of the 19th, a distinctive criollo

Criollo (people)

The Criollo class ranked below that of the Iberian Peninsulares, the high-born permanent residence colonists born in Spain. But Criollos were higher status/rank than all other castes—people of mixed descent, Amerindians, and enslaved Africans...

literary tradition emerged, including the first novels such as José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi

José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi

José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi , Mexican writer and political journalist, best known as the author of El Periquillo Sarniento , reputed to be the first novel written in Latin America....

's El Periquillo Sarniento

El Periquillo Sarniento

The Mangy Parrot: The Life and Times of Periquillo Sarniento Written by himself for his Children by Mexican author José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, is generally considered the first novel written and published in Latin America. El Periquillo was written in 1816, though due to government...

(1816). The "libertadores" themselves were also often distinguished writers, such as Simón Bolívar

Simón Bolívar

Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Yeiter, commonly known as Simón Bolívar was a Venezuelan military and political leader...

and Andrés Bello

Andrés Bello

Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López was a Venezuelan humanist, poet, lawmaker, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an important part of Spanish American culture...

Nineteenth-century literature

The 19th century was a period of "foundational fictions" (in critic Doris Sommer's words), novels in the Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

or Naturalist

Naturalism (literature)

Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...

traditions that attempted to establish a sense of national identity, and which often focused on the indigenous question or the dichotomy of "civilization or barbarism", for which see, say, the Argentine Domingo Sarmiento

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history...

's Facundo
Facundo
Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism is a book written in 1845 by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a writer and journalist who became the seventh president of Argentina...

(1845), the Colombian Jorge Isaacs

Jorge Isaacs

Jorge Isaacs Ferrer was a Colombian writer, politician and soldier. His only novel, María, became one of the most notable works of the Romantic movement in Spanish literature....

's María
María (novel)
María is a novel written by Colombian writer Jorge Isaacs between 1864 and 1867. It is a costumbrist novel representative of the Spanish romantic movement...

, Ecuadorian Juan León Mera

Juan León Mera

Juan León Mera Martínez was an Ecuadorian poet, novelist, journalist, critic, politician and satirist....

's Cumandá
Cumandá
Cumandá is a location in the Chimborazo Province, Ecuador. It is the seat of the Cumandá Canton.- References :* * - External links :*...

(1879), or the Brazilian Euclides da Cunha

Euclides da Cunha

Euclides da Cunha was a Brazilian writer, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões , a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos...

's Os Sertões
Os Sertões
Os Sertões is a book written by the Brazilian author Euclides da Cunha, widely considered one of the greatest achievements of Brazilian and even World literature...

(1902). Such works are still the bedrocks of national canons, and usually mandatory elements of high school curricula.

Another instance of 19th Century Latin American literature is José Hernández's epic poem Martín Fierro
Martín Fierro
Martín Fierro is a 2,316 line epic poem by the Argentine writer José Hernández. The poem was originally published in two parts, El Gaucho Martín Fierro and La Vuelta de Martín Fierro . The poem is, in part, a protest against the modernist tendencies of Argentine president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento...

(1872). The story of a poor gaucho

Gaucho

Gaucho is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, chacos, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile, and Southern Brazil...

drafted to fight a frontier war against Indians, Martín Fierro is an example of the "gauchesque", an Argentine genre of poetry centered around the lives of gauchos.

Modernismo and Boom precursors

In the late 19th century, modernismo
Modernismo
Modernismo is Spanish for modernism, however the term Modernism also indicates a more specific art movement:* Modernismo refers to a Spanish-American literary movement, best exemplified by Rubén Darío...

emerged, a poetic movement whose founding text was the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío

Rubén Darío

Félix Rubén García Sarmiento , known as Rubén Darío, was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo that flourished at the end of the 19th century...

's Azul
Azul
Azul means "blue" in Portuguese and Spanish and may refer to:* Azul..., a poetry collection by Rubén Darío* Azul Azul, a Bolivian pop-dance music group* Azul, Buenos Aires Province, a town in Argentina...

(1888). This was the first Latin American literary movement to influence literary culture outside of the region, and was also the first truly Latin American literature, in that national differences were no longer so much at issue. José Martí

José Martí

José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He was also a part of the Cuban...

, for instance, though a Cuban patriot, also lived in Mexico and the USA and wrote for journals in Argentina and elsewhere. And in 1900 the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó

José Enrique Rodo

José Enrique Rodó Piñeyro was a Uruguayan essayist. He called for the youth of Latin America to reject materialism, to revert back to Greco-Roman habits of free thought and self enrichment, and to develop and concentrate on their culture.He cultivated an epistolary relationship with important...

wrote what became read as a manifesto for the region's cultural awakening, Ariel.

Though modernismo itself is often seen as aestheticist and anti-political, some poets and essayists, Martí among them but also the Peruvians Manuel González Prada

Manuel González Prada

Jose Manuel de los Reyes González de Prada y Ulloa was a Peruvian politician and anarchist, literary critic and director of the National Library of Peru...

and José Carlos Mariátegui

José Carlos Mariátegui

José Carlos Mariátegui La Chira was a Peruvian journalist, political philosopher, and activist. A prolific writer before his early death at age 35, he is considered one of the most influential Latin American socialists of the 20th century...

, introduced compelling critiques of the contemporary social order and particularly the plight of Latin America's indigenous peoples. So the early twentieth century also saw the rise of indigenismo

Indigenismo

Indigenismo is a Latin American idea and movement pressing for a greater social and political role for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and the revindication of indigenous rights and including compensation for past wrongdoings of the colonial and republican states...

, a movement dedicated to representing indigenous culture and the injustices that such communities were undergoing, as for instance with the Peruvian José María Arguedas

José María Arguedas

José María Arguedas Altamirano was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist who wrote mainly in Spanish, although some of his poetry is in Quechua...

and the Mexican Rosario Castellanos

Rosario Castellanos

Rosario Castellanos was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 , she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century...

.

The Argentine Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

invented what was almost a new genre, the philosophical short story, and would go on to become one of the most influential of all Latin American writers. At the same time, Roberto Arlt

Roberto Arlt

Roberto Arlt was an Argentine writer.-Biography:He was born Roberto Godofredo Christophersen Arlt in Buenos Aires on April 2, 1900. His parents were both immigrants: his father Karl Arlt was a Prussian from Posen and his mother was Ekatherine Iobstraibitzer, a native of Trieste and Italian speaking...

offered a very different style, closer to mass culture and popular literature, reflecting the urbanization and European immigration that was shaping the Southern Cone

Southern Cone

Southern Cone is a geographic region composed of the southernmost areas of South America, south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Although geographically this includes part of Southern and Southeast of Brazil, in terms of political geography the Southern cone has traditionally comprised Argentina,...

.

Notable figures in Brazil at this time include the exceptional novelist and short story writer Machado de Assis

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis , often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho , was a Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature, but he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in...

, whose both ironic view and deep psychological analysis introduced a universal scope in Brazilian prose, the modernist poets Mário de Andrade

Mário de Andrade

Mário Raul de Morais Andrade was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada in 1922...

, Oswald de Andrade

Oswald de Andrade

José Oswald de Andrade Souza was a Brazilian poet and polemicist. He was born and spent most of his life in São Paulo....

(whose "Manifesto Antropófago

Manifesto Antropófago

The Manifesto Antropófago was published in 1928 by the Brazilian poet and polemicist Oswald de Andrade. The essay was translated to English in 1991 by Leslie Bary....

" praised Brazilian powers of transculturation

Transculturation

Transculturation is a term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1940 to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures....

), and Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Carlos Drummond de Andrade was perhaps the most influential Brazilian poet of the 20th century. He has become something of a national poet; his poem "Canção Amiga" was printed on the 50 cruzados note...

.

In the 1920s Mexico, the Stridentism

Stridentism

Stridentism was an artistic and multidisciplinary avant-garde movement, founded in Mexico City by Manuel Maples Arce at the end of 1921 but formally developed in Xalapa where all the founders moved after the University of Veracruz granted its support for the movement...

and los Contemporáneos

Los Contemporáneos

Los Contemporáneos can refer to a Mexican modernist group, active in the late twenties and early thirties, as well as to the literary magazine which served as the group's mouthpiece and artistic vehicle from 1928 to 1931...

represented the influx of avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

movements, while the Mexican Revolution

Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...

inspired novels such as Mariano Azuela

Mariano Azuela

Mariano Azuela González was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910...

's Los de abajo
Los de Abajo
Los de Abajo is the official supporters group of Universidad de Chile. They are one of the biggest groups of supporters in Chile.-History:...

, a committed work of social realism and the revolution and its aftermath would continue to be a point of reference for Mexican literature for many decades. In the 1940s, the Cuban novelist and musicologist Alejo Carpentier

Alejo Carpentier

Alejo Carpentier y Valmont was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Carpentier grew up in Havana, Cuba; and despite his European birthplace, Carpentier strongly self-identified...

coined the term "lo real maravilloso" and, along with the Mexican Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo was a Mexican author and photographer. One of Latin America's most esteemed authors, Rulfo's reputation rests on two slim books, the novel Pedro Páramo , and El Llano en llamas...

and the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias

Miguel Ángel Asturias

Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales was a Nobel Prize–winning Guatemalan poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and diplomat...

, would prove a precursor of the Boom and its signature style of "magic realism".

Poetry after Modernismo

Twentieth-century poetry in Latin America has often expressed love and political commitment, particularly given the model provided by Chilean Nobel

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...

laureate 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 followed by such poets as the Nicaraguan Ernesto Cardenal

Ernesto Cardenal

Reverend Father Ernesto Cardenal Martínez is a Nicaraguan Catholic priest and was one of the most famous liberation theologians of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, a party he has since left. From 1979 to 1987 he served as Nicaragua's first culture minister. He is also famous as a poet...

and Salvadoran Roque Dalton

Roque Dalton

Roque Dalton García was a Salvadoran poet and journalist. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets...

.

Other significant poets include the Cuban Nicolás Guillén

Nicolás Guillén

Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba.Guillén was born in Camagüey, Cuba...

, the Puerto Rican Giannina Braschi

Giannina Braschi

Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...

, and the Uruguayan Mario Benedetti

Mario Benedetti

Mario Benedetti was an Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet....

, not to mention the Nobel laureates 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...

and Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

, the latter also a distinguished critic and essayist, famous particularly for his book on Mexican culture, The Labyrinth of Solitude
The Labyrinth of Solitude
The Labyrinth of Solitude , one of Octavio Paz’s most famous works, is a collection of nine essays: ‘The Pachuco and other extremes’, ‘Mexican Mask’, ‘The Day of the Dead’, ‘The Sons of La Malinche’, ‘The Conquest and Colonialism’, ‘From Independence to the Revolution’, ‘The Mexican Intelligence’,...

.

In Chile, Braulio Arenas

Braulio Arenas

Braulio Arenas was a Chilean poet and writer, founder of the surrealist Mandrágora group.- Life :Braulio Arenas lived most of his youth in the north of Chile, moving in his teens to Talca to study...

and others founded in 1938 the Mandrágora

Mandrágora

For other uses see Mandragora .La Mandrágora was a Chilean Surrealist group "officially founded" on 12 July 1938 by Braulio Arenas , Teófilo Cid and Enrique Gómez Correa . The group had met in Talca and first started exchanging in 1932...

group, strongly influenced by Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

as well as by Vicente Huidobro

Vicente 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 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...

. However, this group of poets was overshadowed by Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral.

The Boom

After World War II, Latin America enjoyed increasing economic prosperity, and a new-found confidence also gave rise to a literary boom

Latin American Boom

The Latin American Boom was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s when the work of a group of relatively young Latin American novelists became widely circulated in Europe and throughout the world...

. From 1960 to 1967, the major works of the boom

Latin American Boom

were published. Many of these novels were somewhat rebellious from the general point of view of Latin America culture. Authors crossed traditional boundaries, experimented with language, and often mixed different styles of writing in their works.

Structures of literary works were also changing. Boom writers ventured outside traditional narrative structures, embracing non-linearity and experimental narration. The figure of Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

, though not a Boom author per se, was extremely influential for the Boom generation. Latin American authors were inspired by North American and European authors such as William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

, James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

, and Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

as well as each others' works; many of the authors knew one another and influenced their styles.

The Boom really put Latin American literature on the global map. It was distinguished by daring and experimental novels such as Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...

's Rayuela (1963), that were frequently published in Spain and quickly translated into English. From 1966 to 1968, Emir Rodríguez Monegal

Emir Rodriguez Monegal

Emir Rodríguez Monegal was a Uruguayan scholar, literary critic, and editor of Latin American literature. From 1969 to 1985, Rodríguez Monegal was professor of Latin American contemporary literature at Yale University. He is usually called by his second surname Emir R...

published his influential Latin American literature monthly Mundo Nuevo
Mundo Nuevo
Mundo Nuevo was an influential Spanish-language periodical, being a monthly revista de cultura dedicated to new Latin American literature. Sponsored by the Ford Foundation, it was founded in 1966 by Emir Rodríguez Monegal in Paris, France, and distributed worldwide...

, with excerpts of unreleased novels from then-new writers such as Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Guillermo Cabrera Infante was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín.A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965...

or Severo Sarduy

Severo Sarduy

Severo Sarduy was a Cuban poet, author, playwright, and critic of Cuban literature and art.-Biography:...

, including two chapters of Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez

's Cien años de soledad
One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude , by Gabriel García Márquez, is a novel which tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia...

in 1966. In 1967, the published book was the Boom's defining novel, which led to the association of Latin American literature with magic realism

Magic realism

Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...

, though other important writers of the period such as Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa

Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...

and Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes Macías is a Mexican writer and one of the best-known living novelists and essayists in the Spanish-speaking world. He has influenced contemporary Latin American literature, and his works have been widely translated into English and other languages.-Biography:Fuentes was born in...

do not fit so easily within this framework. Arguably, the Boom's culmination was Augusto Roa Bastos

Augusto Roa Bastos

Augusto Roa Bastos, was a noted Paraguayan novelist and short story writer, and one of the most important Latin American writers of the 20th century. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia, and he later worked as a journalist, screenwriter and professor...

's monumental Yo, el supremo (1974). Other important novelists of the period include the Chilean 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...

, the Guatemalan Augusto Monterroso

Augusto Monterroso

"The Dinosaur" redirects here. For the song by Was , see Walk the Dinosaur. For other uses, see Dinosaur Augusto Monterroso Bonilla was a Guatemalan writer.-Life:...

and the Cuban Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

.

Though the literary boom occurred while Latin America was having commercial success, the works of this period tended to move away from the positives of the modernization that was underway. Boom works tended not to focus on social and local issues, but rather on universal and at times metaphysical themes.

Political turmoil in Latin American countries such as Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

at this time influenced the literary boom as well. Some works anticipated an end to the prosperity that was occurring, and even predicted old problems would resurface in the near future. Their works foreshadowed the events to come in the future of Latin America, with the 1970s and 1980s dictatorships, economic turmoil, and Dirty War

Dirty War

The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...

Post-Boom and contemporary literature

Post-Boom literature is sometimes characterized by a tendency towards irony and towards the use of popular genres, as in the case of the work of Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig was an Argentine author...

. Some writers felt the success of the Boom to be a burden, and spiritedly denounced the caricature that reduces Latin American literature to magical realism. Hence the Chilean 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...

came up with McOndo

McOndo

McOndo is a Latin American literary movement that breaks from the dominant Magical Realism mode of narration, and counters it with the strong, ideologic associations of the cultural and narrative languages of the mass communications media, and with the modernity of urban living; the experience of...

as an antidote to the Macondo-ism that demanded of all aspiring writers that they set their tales in steamy tropical jungles in which the fantastic and the real happily coexisted. In a mock diary by post-modernist Giannina Braschi the Narrator of the Latin American Boom is shot by a Macy's make-up artist who accuses the Boom of capitalizing on her solitude. [3] Other writers, however, have traded on the Boom's success: see for instance Laura Esquivel

Laura Esquivel

Laura Esquivel is a Mexican author making a noted contribution to Latin-American literature. She was born the third of four children of Julio César Esquivel, a telegraph operator, and Josefa Valdés.-Literary career:...

's pastiche of magical realism in Como agua para chocolate.

Overall, contemporary literature in the region is vibrant and varied, ranging from the best-selling Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist.-Biography:Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical,...

and 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...

to the more avant-garde and critically acclaimed work of writers such as 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....

, Giannina Braschi

Giannina Braschi

, Luisa Valenzuela

Luisa Valenzuela

Luisa Valenzuela is a post-'Boom' novelist and short story writer. Her writing is characterized by an experimental, avant-garde style which questions hierarchical social structures from a feminist perspective. She is best known for her work written in response to the dictatorship of the 1970s in...

, Ricardo Piglia

Ricardo Piglia

Ricardo Piglia is one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers, known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration , The Absent City , Burnt Money ; and criticism including Criticism and Fiction , Brief Forms and...

, 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...

, 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...

, Alicia Yánez, Jaime Marchán, Jaime Bayly

Jaime Bayly

Jaime Bayly Letts is a Peruvian writer, journalist and television personality. He is the third of 10 children and is known as "el niño terrible" .-Early life:...

, Manfredo Kempff, Edmundo Paz Soldán, Gioconda Belli

Gioconda Belli

Gioconda Belli is an author, novelist and renowned Nicaraguan poet.-Early life:Gioconda Belli, of Northern Italian descent, was an active participant in the Sandinista struggle against the Somoza dictatorship, and her work for the movement led to her being forced into exile in Mexico in 1975...

, Jorge Franco

Jorge Franco

Jorge Franco was a Portuguese Olympic fencer. He competed in the team sabre event at the 1952 Summer Olympics.-References:...

, Víctor Montoya

Víctor Montoya

Víctor Montoya is a Bolivian writer, cultural journalist, and pedagogue. Imprisoned by the dictatorship in his native Bolivia, he became an exile following a campaign by Amnesty International in 1977.-Biography:...

, Mario Mendoza

Mario Mendoza

Mario Mendoza Aizpuru is a former Major League Baseball infielder. Mendoza, a lifetime 0.215 hitter, is best known as the threshold for batting aptitude, with the "Mendoza Line", meaning a batting average of .200....

or Roberto Bolaño

Roberto 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...

. Other important figures include the Argentine César Aira

César Aira

César Aira is an Argentine writer and translator, and an exponent of Argentine contemporary literature. He has published over fifty books of stories, novels and essays...

or the Colombian Fernando Vallejo

Fernando Vallejo

Fernando Vallejo Rendón is a novelist, filmmaker and essayist, born in Colombia. He obtained Mexican nationality in 2007.Vallejo was born and raised in Medellín, though he left his hometown early in life...

, whose La virgen de los sicarios depicted the violence in a Medellín under the influence of the drug trade.

There has also been considerable attention paid to the genre of testimonio, texts produced in collaboration with subaltern subjects such as Rigoberta Menchú

Rigoberta Menchú

Rigoberta Menchú Tum is an indigenous Guatemalan, of the K'iche' ethnic group. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the plight of Guatemala's indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War , and to promoting indigenous rights in the country...

.

Finally, a new breed of chroniclers is represented by the more journalistic Carlos Monsiváis

Carlos Monsiváis

Carlos Monsiváis Aceves was a Mexican writer, critic, political activist, and journalist. of French decent He also wrote political opinion columns in leading newspapers and was considered to be an opinion leader within the country's progressive sectors. His generation of writers includes Elena...

and Pedro Lemebel

Pedro Lemebel

Pedro Lemebel is an openly gay Chilean essayist, chronicler, and novelist. He is known for his cutting critique of authoritarianism and for his humorous depiction of Chilean popular culture, from a queer perspective.-List of works:...

, who draw also on the long-standing tradition of essayistic production as well as the precedents of engaged and creative non-fiction represented by, say, the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano

Eduardo Galeano

Eduardo Hughes Galeano is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego and Las venas abiertas de América Latina which have been translated into twenty languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and...

and the Mexican Elena Poniatowska

Elena Poniatowska

Elena Poniatowska is a Mexican journalist and author. Her generation of writers include Carlos Fuentes‎, José Emilio Pacheco and Carlos Monsiváis.-Life:Poniatowska was born in Paris to Prince Jean Joseph Evremont Sperry Poniatowski and Paula Amor Yturbe...

Prominent writers

According to literary critic Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...

, the most eminent Latin American author of any century is the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

. In his controversial book The Western Canon, Bloom says: "Of all Latin American authors in this century, he is the most universal... If you read Borges frequently and closely, you become something of a Borgesian, because to read him is to activate an awareness of literature in which he has gone farther than anybody else."

Among the novelists, perhaps the most prominent author to emerge out of Latin America in the 20th century is Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez

. His book Cien Años de Soledad (1967), is one of the most important works in world literature of the 20th century. Borges opined that it was "the Don Quixote of Latin America."

Among the greatest poets of the 20th century is 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....

; according to Gabriel García Márquez, Neruda "is the greatest poet of the 20th century, in any language." His work is widely read and translated.

The most important literary prize of the Spanish language is widely considered to be the Cervantes Prize of Spain. Latin American authors who have won this prestigious award include: José Emilio Pacheco

José Emilio Pacheco

José Emilio Pacheco Berny is a Mexican essayist, novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the major Mexican poets of the second half of the 20th century....

(Mexico), Juan Gelman

Juan Gelman

Juan Gelman is an Argentine poet. He has published more than twenty books of poetry since 1956. He won the Cervantes Prize in 2007, the most important in Spanish literature...

(Argentina), Sergio Pitol

Sergio Pitol

Sergio Pitol Demeneghi is a prominent Mexican writer, translator and diplomat. In 2005 he received the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world....

(Mexico), Gonzalo Rojas

Gonzalo Rojas

Gonzalo Rojas Pizarro was a Chilean poet. His work is part of the continuing Latin American avant-garde literary tradition of the twentieth century.- Biography :...

(Chile), Álvaro Mutis

Álvaro Mutis

Álvaro Mutis Jaramillo is a Colombian poet, novelist, and essayist and author of the compendium The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll.-Early life:...

(Colombia), Jorge Edwards

Jorge Edwards

Jorge Edwards Valdés is a Chilean novelist, journalist and diplomat. He is currently the Chilean ambassador to France.-Life and career:...

(Chile), Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

(Cuba), Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa

(Perú), Dulce María Loynaz

Dulce María Loynaz

Daughter of the famous General Enrique Loynaz del Castillo, a hero of the Cuban Liberation Army and author of Cuban National Anthem lyrics; and sister of poet Enrique Loynaz Muñoz...

(Cuba), Adolfo Bioy Casares

Adolfo Bioy Casares

Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel.-Biography:Adolfo Bioy...

(Argentina), Augusto Roa Bastos

Augusto Roa Bastos

(Paraguay), Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes

(Mexico), Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...

(Argentina), Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

(Mexico), Juan Carlos Onetti

Juan Carlos Onetti

Juan Carlos Onetti was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories.A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time...

(Uruguay), Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

(Argentina) and Alejo Carpentier

Alejo Carpentier

(Cuba).

Latin American authors who have won the most prestigious literary award in the world, the Nobel Prize for Literature, include: Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa

(Peru, 2010), Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

(Mexico, 1990), Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez

(Colombia, 1982), 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....

(Chile, 1971), Miguel Ángel Asturias

Miguel Ángel Asturias

Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales was a Nobel Prize–winning Guatemalan poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and diplomat...

(Guatemala, 1967), and Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral

(Chile, 1945).

The Neustadt International Prize for Literature

Neustadt International Prize for Literature

The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a biennial award for literature sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and its international literary publication, World Literature Today. It is widely considered to be the most prestigious international literary prize after the Nobel Prize in...

, perhaps the most important international literary award after the Nobel Prize, counts several Latin American authors among its recipients; they include: Claribel Alegría (Nicaragua), Álvaro Mutis (Colombia), João Cabral de Melo Neto (Brazil), Octavio Paz (Mexico), and Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia). Candidates for the prize include: Ricardo Piglia (Argentina), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), Marjorie Agosin (Chile), Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay), Homero Aridjis

Homero Aridjis

Homero Aridjis is a Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalist and diplomat known for his independence.-Family and Early Life:...

(Mexico), Luis Fernando Verissimo (Brazil), Augusto Monterroso (Guatemala), Ernesto Cardenal (Nicaragua), Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Jorge Amado (Brazil), Ernesto Sábato (Argentina), Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Brazil), and Pablo Neruda (Chile).

Other important international literary awards are the Jerusalem Prize

Jerusalem Prize

The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society is a biennial literary award given to writers whose works have dealt with themes of human freedom in society. It is awarded at the Jerusalem International Book Fair, and the recipient usually delivers an address when accepting the award...

, whose winners include: Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), Ernesto Sabato (Argentina), Octavio Paz (Mexico), and Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina); the Romulo Gallegos Prize

Rómulo Gallegos Prize

The Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize was created on 6 August 1964 by a presidential decree enacted by Venezuelan President Raúl Leoni, in honor of the Venezuelan politician and President Rómulo Gallegos, the author of Doña Bárbara....

, whose winners include: Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), Fernando del Paso

Fernando del Paso

Fernando del Paso Morante is a Mexican novelist, essayist and poet.Del Paso was born in Mexico City and took two years in economics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México...

(Mexico), Abel Posse (Argentina), Manuel Mejía Vallejo (Colombia), Arturo Uslar Pietri (Venezuela), Mempo Giardinelli (Argentina), Ángeles Mastretta

Ángeles Mastretta

Ángeles Mastretta is a Mexican author and journalist. She is well known for creating inspirational female characters and fictional pieces that reflect the social and political realities of Mexico in her life.-Background:...

(Mexico), Roberto Bolaño (Chile), Fernando Vallejo (Colombia), Elena Poniatowska

Elena Poniatowska

(Mexico), and William Ospina (Colombia); and the Juan Rulfo Prize

Juan Rulfo Prize

The Juan Rulfo Prize for Latin American and Caribbean Literature, created in 1991, is awarded to writers of literature from Latin America or the Caribbean who write in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or English, or to writers from any part of America who write in Spanish...

: Nicanor Parra (Chile), Juan José Arreola

Juan José Arreola

Juan José Arreola Zúñiga was a Mexican writer and academic. He is considered Mexico's premier experimental short story writer of the twentieth century. Arreola is recognized as one of the first Latin American writers to abandon realism; he uses elements of fantasy to underscore existentialist and...

(Mexico), Eliseo Diego (Cuba), Julio Ramón Ribeyro (Peru), Nélida Piñón (Brazil), Augusto Monterroso (Guatemala), Olga Orozco (Argentina), Sergio Pitol

Sergio Pitol

Sergio Pitol Demeneghi is a prominent Mexican writer, translator and diplomat. In 2005 he received the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world....

(Mexico), Juan Gelman (Argentina), Juan García Ponce

Juan García Ponce

Juan García Ponce was a Mexican novelist, short-story writer, essayist, translator and critic of Mexican art.-Life and works:...

(Mexico), Cintio Vitier (Cuba), Rubem Fonseca (Brazil), Tomás Segovia

Tomás Segovia

Tomás Segovia was a Mexican author and poet of Spanish origin. He was born in Valencia, Spain, and studied in France and Morocco. He went into exile to Mexico, where he taught at the Colegio de México and other universities...

(Mexico), Carlos Monsiváis

Carlos Monsiváis

(Mexico), Fernando del Paso (Mexico), Rafael Cadenas (Venezuela), and Margo Glantz (Mexico).

Winners of Mexico's Alfonso Reyes Prize include: Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Alejo Carpentier (Cuba), Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), Ernesto Mejía Sánchez (Nicaragua), José Luis Martínez (Mexico), Rubén Bonifaz Nuño

Rubén Bonifaz Nuño

Rubén Bonifaz Nuño is a Mexican poet and classical scholar.Born in Córdoba, Veracruz, he studied law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico from 1934 to 1947. In 1960, he began lecturing in Latin at the UNAM's Faculty of Philosophy and Literature and received a doctorate in Classics in...

(Mexico), Octavio Paz (Mexico), Alí Chumacero

Ali Chumacero

Alí Chumacero Lora was a Mexican poet.-Career:Chumacero was born in Acaponeta, Nayarit. He was the joint editor of Tierra Nueva magazine from 1940-42. He edited Letras de México and El Hijo Pródigo....

(Mexico), Gutierre Tibón

Gutierre Tibón

Gutierre Tibón was an Italian-Mexican author. He wrote widely on issues of cultural identity, mixing ideas from anthropology, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, ethnology, sociology, and political science.-Early career:...

(Mexico), Ramón Xirau

Ramón Xirau

Ramon Xirau Subias is a Mexican poet, philosopher and literary critic. In 1939, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish civil war, he emigrated to Mexico where he obtained Mexican citizenship in 1955...

(Mexico), Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentina), Andrés Henestrosa

Andrés Henestrosa

Andrés Henestrosa Morales was a Mexican writer and politician. In addition to his prose and poetry, Henestrosa was elected to the federal legislature, serving three terms in the Chamber of Deputies, and as a senator for the state of Oaxaca from 1982 to 1988...

(Mexico), Arnaldo Orfila Reynal (Argentina), Joaquín Diez Canedo (Mexico), Germán Arciniegas (Colombia), Juan José Arreola

Juan José Arreola

(Mexico), Arturo Uslar Pietri (Venezuela), Miguel León-Portilla

Miguel León-Portilla

Miguel León-Portilla is a Mexican anthropologist and historian, and a prime authority on Nahuatl thought and literature.He wrote a doctoral thesis on Nahua philosophy under the tutelage of Fr...

(Mexico), Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot (Colombia), José Emilio Pacheco

José Emilio Pacheco

José Emilio Pacheco Berny is a Mexican essayist, novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the major Mexican poets of the second half of the 20th century....

(Mexico), Antonio Candido (Brazil), Ernesto de la Peña (Mexico), and Alfonso Rangel Guerra (Mexico).

Latin American authors who figured in prominent literary critic Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom

's The Western Canon list of the most enduring works of world literature include: Rubén Dário, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Severo Sarduy, Reinaldo Arenas, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, César Vallejo, Miguel Ángel Asturias, José Lezama Lima, José Donoso, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

Brazilian authors who have won the Camões Prize

Camões Prize

The Camões Prize , named after Luís de Camões is the most important literary prize for the Portuguese language. It is awarded annually by the Portuguese Fundação Biblioteca Nacional and the Brazilian Departamento Nacional do Livro to the author of an outstanding work written in Portuguese.It...

, the most prestigious literary award in the Portuguese language, include: João Cabral de Melo Neto, Rachel de Queiroz, Jorge Amado, Antonio Candido, Autran Dourado, Rubem Fonseca, Lygia Fagundes Telles, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, and Ferreira Gullar. Some notable authors who have won Brazil's Prêmio Machado de Assis

Prêmio Machado de Assis

The Prêmio Machado de Assis is a literary prize awarded by the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and possibly the most prestigious literary award in Brazil. The prize was founded in 1941, named in memory of the novelist Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis...

include: Rachel de Queiroz, Cecília Meireles, João Guimarães Rosa, Érico Veríssimo, Lúcio Cardoso, and Ferreira Gullar.

Chronology: Late 19th century-present day

External links

Literature from Latin America, from LANIC
Palabra virtual Latin American Poetry.
miniTEXTOS.org Contemporary short-stories, poetry, essays and theatre.
Latineos Latin America, Caribbean, arts and culture

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Pre-Columbian literature

Colonial literature

Nineteenth-century literature

Modernismo and Boom precursors

Poetry after Modernismo

The Boom

Post-Boom and contemporary literature

Prominent writers

Chronology: Late 19th century-present day

See also

External links