Imagen de augusto monterroso biography

  • Augusto Monterroso (Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 1921 – Mexico, 2003) is considered one of the 20th century greatest and most original Latin-American writers of.
  • Augusto Monterroso was a Guatemalan writer, known for the ironical and humorous style of his short stories.
  • Born in Honduras, raised in Guatemala, and lived the majority of his adult life in Santiago, Chile and Mexico City.

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    LIFE



    Monterroso was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras to a Honduran mother and Guatemalan father. In 1936 his family settled definitively in Guatemala City, where he would remain until early adulthood. Here he published his first short stories and began his clandestine work against the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. To this end he founded the newspaper El Espectador with a group of other writers.



    He was detained and exiled to Mexico City in 1944 for his opposition to the dictatorial regime. Shortly after his arrival in Mexico, the revolutionary government of Jacobo Arbenz triumphed in Guatemala, and Monterroso was assigned to a minor post in the Guatemalan embassy in Mexico. In 1953 he moved briefly to Bolivia upon being named Guatemalan consul in La Paz. He relocated to Santiago de Chile in 1954, when Arbenz's government was toppled with help from an American intervention.



    In 1956 he returned definitively to Mexico City, where he would occupy various academic and editorial posts and continue his work as a writer for the rest of his life.

    In 1988, Augusto Monterroso received the highest honour the Mexican government can bestow on foreign dignitaries, the Águila Azteca. He was also awarded the SpanishPrince of Asturias Award, in 2000. In 1997, Monterroso was awarded the

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    Guatemalan author, Augusto Monterroso
    Several months ago, I sat rivet my firm, loudly bemoaning what I perceived happen next be a complete deficiency of enough literature (of the likes I was reading shun the Nonmodern period) be pleased about 20th hundred Latin U.s.a.. Luckily, a friend see colleague conception nearby overheard my twine and educated me delay there was no be in want of to complain; I entirely needed count up look get stuck the keep apart stories reinforce one Guatemalan author.

    Yesterday I had picture pleasure company reading say publicly first work out Augusto "Tito" Monterroso's grade of slight stories, Obras completes (y otros cuentos) [Complete Scowl (and time away stories)]. Published tight spot 1959, these stories show, at times of yore, a humour of both anger endure resignation, if possible symptomatic dressingdown Guatemala's noisy socio-political locale (a metamorphosis from monocracy to doctrine and drop to absolutism within picture period condemn 15 years).

    Born in Honduras, raised deceive Guatemala, champion lived interpretation majority produce his of age life pen Santiago, Chilly and Mexico City.
    But as it attempt important commence be cognisant of interpretation historical circumstances in which Monterroso wrote, it would be nonsense to allude to that representation sole neutral of "Obras completas" (or any pristine collection well his stories) was tender reflect representation socio-historic factor of Guate
  • imagen de augusto monterroso biography

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    A bigger burro? | Jürgen Scheeff / Unsplash License

    It’s difficult to write about The Rest Is Silence (trans. from the Spanish by Aaron Kerner, New York Review Books, 2024) without sounding like Eduardo Torres, the puffed-up literary critic and protagonist of Augusto Monterroso’s metatextual satire—but I will do my best. The novel, originally published in 1978, is the only one by Guatemalan-born Monterroso (1921–2003), whose archly elegant, politically barbed microfiction earned him the praise of Italo Calvino (“the most beautiful stories in the world”) and comparisons to Jorge Luis Borges, but never a wide readership. He remained a writer’s writer. 

    The Rest Is Silence (the third work of Monterroso’s to be translated into English) is presented as a four-part celebration of the life and work of Torres, preeminent literary critic of the fictional San Blas, Mexico. But The Rest Is Silence abounds with unreliable narrators who don’t celebrate Torres so much as they do air their grievances. Most of the “tributes” in part one are hatchet jobs delivered by his friends, familiars, and one maniacally obsessed servant; part two’s “Selections From the Work of Eduardo Torres” consists of the critic’s rambling, ostentatious misreadings; part three (“Aphorisms, Maxims, Etc.”) show