Chilean writer Jorge Edwards, author of novels, short stories and essays, professional diplomat from 1957 to 1973, literary critic and journalist, died this Friday at the age of 91 at his home in the Salamanca district of Madrid. Edwards, winner of the 1999 Cervantes Prize, one of the greats of 20th-century Latin American literature, of which he was a member of the Generación del 50 group, died in his sleep this Friday at around five o’clock in the afternoon. After hearing the news of his death, writers and representatives of the literary and cultural world of Spain and Latin America come to his house to say goodbye to him. Among them the Chilean Carlos Franz, the Peruvian Jorge Eduardo Benavides or the Venezuelan Juan Carlos Chirinos. “He was a writer at the forefront of great Latin American literature,” Franz said over the phone from Edwards’ residence in the Spanish capital. “He will be remembered for exceptional works of a political nature, such as Persona non grata, with which he was one of the first to break with the Cuban Revolution. However, it would be unfair not to recognize so many other brilliant works of his career, such as The Useless Family or The House of Dostoyevsky, his friend added.
Edwards, who settled in Madrid after the Covid pandemic, is notable for titles such as Los convidados de piedra (1978), The Wax Museum (1981), Goodbye, poet (1990), in addition to Persona non grata from 1973. , The Dream of History (2000) and Dostoyevsky’s House (2008). Along with Cervantes, he received the National Prize for Chilean Literature in 1994. Since 1982 he was also a member of the Chilean Language Academy. Exiled to Barcelona after Pinochet’s military coup in 1973, he received Spanish citizenship in 2010.
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A few weeks ago he had a domestic fall that affected one of his shoulders and affected his health. By then he had been very active and was working on the third volume of his memoirs, but the accident thwarted his plans and this work will remain unfinished. He spent his last days in bed and went to a Madrid hospital this Friday because his condition had deteriorated, but he was discharged. After falling asleep in the afternoon, he never woke up again. He lived with his daughter Ximena.
Edwards was born in Santiago in 1931 and studied at the Law School of the University of Chile and at the Pedagogical Institute of the same university. He then completed his postgraduate education at Princeton University. In 1952 he published his first book, El Patio, a collection of short stories to critical acclaim. He made his debut as a novelist in 1965 with El peso de la noche. As a diplomat, he held various positions: First Secretary in Paris (1962-1967), Counselor in Lima (1970), Executive Director in Havana (1970-1971) and Advisory Pastor in Paris (1971-1973).
A close friend of Pablo Neruda, he dedicated several works to the character of the poet Adiós poeta: Pablo Neruda y su tiempo (1990) and Oh, maligna (2019). Despite the almost 30-year age difference with the poet, Edwards knew Neruda closely at different stages of his life. They last met in Paris in the 1970s, just before the Nobel Prize winner died in 1973. “When they ask me if they killed him, I always say: ‘That would have been like killing someone.’ Neruda was seriously ill and I knew that from close quarters,” Edwards commented in a 2016 interview with EL PAÍS on whether the Pinochet dictatorship had given him an assassination order after the first days of the coup.
Just after the coup, Edwards went to Barcelona, where he was director of the publishing house Difusora Internacional and worked as a consultant at Seix Barral. Between 1994 and 1997 he was Ambassador to Paris for Unesco, a UN organization of which he was a member of the Executive Board, and President of the Committee on Conventions and Recommendations (1995-1997) dealing with human rights. In 2010 he was appointed ambassador to the Chilean government by Sebastián Piñera in Paris. However, Edwards said that he was very fond of his craft and never stopped practicing it to the end. “I will not finish writing,” he told this newspaper seven years ago in his large apartment in the center of the Chilean capital. “I’m old and I have plans. It’s good to have plans.”
According to his biography on the Instituto Cervantes website, his work is considered “a far cry from usual Chilean literature” as it “focuses on the urban aspects of the country and distances itself from the rural theme”. He was also a contributor to various European and Latin American newspapers such as EL PAÍS, Le Monde, Corriere della Sera, La Nación or Clarín.
Historical photo of Latin American authors: from left Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Edwards, Mario Vargas Llosa, José Donoso and Ricardo Muñoz Suay, together with Carmen Balcells, 1974 in Barcelona. Archive of Carmen Balcell
A service will be held in Madrid on Sunday and later his remains will be cremated at the La Paz funeral home. His ashes will be repatriated to Chile.
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