Fernando del Paso

Fernando del Paso was a Mexican novelist, poet, painter, and diplomat born in 1935 in Mexico City. He is considered one of the greatest Mexican novelists of the twentieth century, known for encyclopedic, maximalist novels of enormous ambition and erudition. He worked for many years as a diplomat and as a broadcaster for the BBC in London. His major novels are three sprawling, polyphonic works: José Trigo (1966), Palinuro de México (1977, Prix Médicis Étranger in France), and Noticias del Imperio (1987), a monumental novel about the French intervention in Mexico and the tragic reign of Maximilian I and Empress Carlota. Each of these novels demonstrates a baroque extravagance of language and a relentless curiosity about history, science, and the possibilities of fiction. Del Paso received the Premio Cervantes in 2015, recognition of a lifetime's contribution to Mexican and Spanish-language literature. He was compared to James Joyce and Laurence Sterne for the encyclopedic ambition and linguistic exuberance of his fiction. He died in Guadalajara in 2018. His complete works represent one of the great achievements of the Latin American literary tradition.