Fernando del Paso
Fernando del Paso Morante was a Mexican novelist, essayist, and poet.
Biography
Del Paso was born in Mexico City and studied economics for two years at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He then lived in London for 14 years, where he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation, and in France, where he worked for Radio France Internationale and briefly served as Consul General of Mexico.He has been a member of El Colegio Nacional de México since 1996 and won several international awards, including the Premio Miguel de Cervantes, Alfonso Reyes International Prize, the FIL Literature Prize, the Rómulo Gallegos Prize, the Best Novel Published in France Award for Palinurus of Mexico, the Xavier Villaurrutia Award and the Mexico Novel Award.
Noticias del Imperio is an important contribution to the Latin American new historical novel. The novel, based upon the lives of Maximilian and Carlota and the French Intervention in Mexico, is called by the author a "historiographic" novel. This encyclopedic novel is remarkable in that, instead of trying to discover the "truth" about "what really happened," the author presents several possible versions of important and controversial events.
Del Paso claimed influence from various authors, including Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Erskine Caldwell, and Thomas Wolfe.
Library and Media Center
On May 14, 2007, the Universidad de Guadalajara paid homage to Fernando del Paso by naming the library and media center in Ocotlán, Jalisco, the "Biblioteca Fernando del Paso". This library is the largest in the western region of Mexico, with a collection of 120,000 volumes and a capacity for 800 simultaneous users.Awards
- Xavier Villaurrutia Award, 1966
- Rómulo Gallegos Prize, 1982
- FIL Literature Prize, 2007
- Alfonso Reyes International Prize, 2013
- Miguel de Cervantes Prize, 2015