Carlos Fuentes (1928 - )

Born in 1928 to Mexican diplomats, Carlos Fuentes was actually born in Panama, where he spent part of his childhood. During his early years he also lived in South America, North America and Europe. In his teenage years he returned to Mexico and studied law at the University of Mexico, and later went to Geneva for postgraduate studies.

Fuentes is one of Mexican and Latin American literature’s most influential writers. The time he spent in Mexico influenced his later writings, in which some of the central themes are about what the “Mexican essence” really is. He published his first book Los días enmascarados (The Masked Days) in 1954. In 1955 he founded the Revista Mexicana de Literatura (Mexican Literature Magazine), together with Emmanuel Carballo and Octavio Paz. Fuentes has taught in Princeton, Harvard, Columbia and Cambridge.

Fuentes is known for using a mixture of narrative processes in his writing, including typically British and North American aspects such as scene fragmentation, flashbacks and character’s inner thoughts and monologues, among others. His writing deals mainly with Mexican identity.

Some of his most famous titles include:

• La región más transparente (1959) – The Most Transparent Region
• La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962) - The Death of Artemio Cruz,
• Zona sagrada (1967) – Sacred Zone
• Cambio de piel (1967) – Change of Skin
• Cumpleaños (1969) - Birthday
• Terra Nostra (1975)
• Cristóbal Nonato (1987)
• Diana o la cazadora solitaria (1972) Diana or the Lonely Hunter

Fuentes was awarded the National Mexican Literature Award in 1984, the Cervantes Award in 1987 and the Príncipe de Asturias Award in 1994.