Hernán Rivera Letelier

CHILE, 1950

NATIONAL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE - CHILE 2022

ALFAGUARA NOVEL PRIZE 2010

YASNAYA POLYANA BOOK PRIZE for THE ART OF RESURRECTION 2019

He grew up and worked for many years in the saltpeter mines of Atacama, in northern Chile. His novel La Reina cantaba rancheras (Queen Isabel Sang Rancheras) catapulted him to fame, turning into one of the most widespread literary works in recent Chilean fiction. Two years later, he won the National Book Award again. His most well-known novel La contadora de películas (The Movie-teller) has been translated into 19 languages and is being adapted to a major motion picture. In 2001, Rivera Letelier was named Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Literature by the French Ministry of Culture and in 2019, he received the Yasnaya Polyana Prize for El arte de la resurección (The art of resurrection).

"For the first time and after many years, something new and original

in Latin American literature."    

LE MAGAZINE LITTÉRAIRE

 

"Hernán Rivera Letelier is one of the most original voices

of the new Latin American narrative."

EL MUNDO

 

"The simplicity of the worker, a life full of anecdotes and his talent

to tell them,gave rise to a successful writer who, next to Isabel Allende

and Antonio Skármeta, is considered

as the most recognized Chilean narrative today."

CLARÍN

© Daniel Mordzinski

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By Hernán Rivera Letelier

  • The Secret Life of a Writer

    NOVEL, 2023

    The Secret Life of a Writer - a confessional novel - offers a glimpse of the world from which the winner of the Chilean National Award for Literature crafted his work: the stories from the pampas...

  • Men Come to a Town

    NOVEL, 2022

    Men Come to a Town is a collection of three brief novels. A violinist, conman and photographer arrive at three different towns in northern Chile during the saltpetre boom. There, they will...

  • The Kidnapping of Sister Tegualda

    NOVEL, 2021

    The only private detective in the city of Antofagasta is faced with his most personal case yet: after discovering his true feelings for Sister Tegualda in Havana, someone has decided to take their...

  • Epiphany in the desert

    NOVEL, 2020

    For the first time in his long career, Hernán Rivera Letelier has decided to tell the fascinating tale of how, at the age of forty-four and entirely unheralded, he became one of the...

  • The Autodidact

    NOVEL, 2019

    The Autodidact is a novel inspired by Hernán Rivera Letelier's own experiences, especially his discovery of literature and writing when he was young man working in one of the last...

  • The Man Who Stared at the Sky

    NOVEL, 2018

    Every day, at the corner of one of the busiest streets in Antofagasta, an old man would stop just to look up at the sky. It is with him that the story begins. A street painter and traffic-light...

  • Death Laid Bare in Havana

    NOVEL, 2017

    The son of a wealthy businessman from Antofagasta disappears without a trace in Havana after being accused of murder. When the Cuban police fail to find him, at the suggestion of an enigmatic...

  • Death Smells of Patchouli

    NOVEL, 2016

    A mystery that lay buried for decades reunites the most unlikely pair of detectives in the north of Chile, Tira Gutiérrez and Sister Tegualda. A few days after the demolition of the...

  • Death is an Old Story

    NOVEL, 2015

    A rapist is attacking women in the Antofagasta cemetery. The victims say they were dragged into a tomb by a man with a terrifying voice who reeks of death. Tira Gutiérrez, the only private...

  • The Bird Seller

    NOVEL, 2014

    The bird seller is the only passenger on the train to get off in Desolación. “The place is so sad, barren and neglected that not even the vultures circle it.” The...

  • The Love History of a Dancing Man

    NOVEL, 2013

    He was ugly, truly ugly, but he was also the greatest dancer ever seen in the Atacama desert. Fernando Noble came to Coya with his wife, Ana Santa Fe, looking for work. He managed to get a post as...

  • The Writer of Epitaphs

    NOVEL, 2001

    "They call him the Writer of Epitaphs, but really he's an angel. A café angel. He lives a quiet life under the canopy of his favourite café, at least it was quiet until the...

  • Romance of the Goblin That Writes Me My Novels

    NOVEL, 2011

    After a solid and successful body of work in fiction, this Chilean writer brings us a delicious piece in which he tells in simple but rich language the story of the goblin who has always appeared...

  • The Art of Resurrection

    NOVEL, 2010

    ALFAGUARA NOVEL PRIZE 2010 YASNAYA POLYANA BOOK PRIZE 2019 The so-called "Christ of Elqui" arrived at the mining office of Los dones with his long black hair and beard as if he were a...

  • Song to Walk on the Waters

    NOVEL, 2010

    In the last months of Allende’s government, Brando Taberna and his friend Cristo Perez, in the sensual company of the buxom Jerónima Monroe, converge on Arica in northern Chile, after...

  • The Movie-teller

    NOVEL, 2009

     

  • My Name Is Malarrosa

    NOVEL, 2008

    She was supposed to have been named Malvarossa but a registration error changed the course of her fate. The girl, a bird lover with a mirage-like gaze and a strange gift for decorating the dead,...

  • The Fantasizer

    NOVEL, 2006

    The inhabitants of a typical mining town (or ‘office’) in the salt desert of northern Chile (the natural habitat for this author) are about to face two important events that will...

  • Where the brave die

    SHORT STORIES, 1999

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