Augusto Monterroso

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Augusto Monterroso (born December 21, 1921 in Honduras , † February 7, 2003 ) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat.

Life

Augusto Monterroso spent most of his life not in Guatemala but in other Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. Born in Honduras as the son of Guatemalans, Mexican exile became his real home. From 1944 to 1953 he worked as a student and as a diplomat for the only democratic government in Guatemala under Jacobo Arbenz in Mexico . In 1954 he worked as a consul for the same in Bolivia , until he lost his post in a coup against the Arbenz government and went into exile in Chile , where he was, among other things, editorial secretary for Pablo Neruda's Gazeta de Chile . Most recently, Augusto Monterroso had his permanent residence in Mexico.

Monterroso's tales have a tendency to irony and are influenced by Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka (The Beetle's Dream) . He often resorts to the narrative form of the fable (How the horse imagines God) in order to dress his intentions in language. One of his peculiarities is the brevity of his narratives, which often only consist of a single, artistically elaborated set of boxes (The other six; Christmas. New Year. Whatever.) . According to the Italian semiotic Umberto Eco , the story The Dinosaur is considered the shortest story ( shortest story ) in the world, around which a small discourse has already developed. (Source: In a nutshell. The fastest stories in the world . Diogenes Verl.) In 1996 he received the Juan Rulfo Prize .

Works

  • El concierto y El eclipse (The Concert and the Solar Eclipse, 1947)
  • Uno de cada tres y El centennario (On three one and The Centenartaler, 1952)
  • Obras completas y otros cuentos (Collected Works and Other Stories, 1959)
    • The entire work and other fables . Edited by Peter Schultze-Kraft. Trans. D. Fables by Inke Schultze-Kraft, the stories by Karl August Horst. Zurich: Diogenes-Verlag 1973
  • La oveja negra y demás fábulas (The black sheep and other fables, 1969)
  • Movimiento perpetuo (Eternal Movement, 1972)
  • Personal anthology , 1975
  • Lo demás es silencio. La vida y la obra de Eduardo Torres (Being mature is everything and the rest is silence, 1978)
    • Being mature is everything and the rest is silence: the only true and authorized version of the life and work of the immortal Don Eduardo Torres from San Blas . From the chip. by Christel Dorbencker. Berlin: Verl. Volk und Welt, 1992
  • The frog who wanted to be a real frog: short prose . Translated by Karl August Horst, edited by Carlos Rincón. Leipzig: Reclam 1977

literature

  • Carlos Rincón (1976/1985): Epilogue , in: Augusto Monterroso: The frog who wanted to be a real frog . Leipzig: 1983.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Monterroso, Augusto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Guatemalan writer and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Honduras
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 2003