Neruda
An Intimate Biography
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- $34.99
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- $34.99
Publisher Description
Like a rain-swollen river sweeping everything into its current, Pablo Neruda channeled all his life experiences into impassioned poetry that ultimately brought him the 1971 Nobel Prize for literature. His close friend and fellow writer-activist Volodia Teitelboim shared that exciting process for forty years, uniquely qualifying him to offer this intimate portrait of the poet. Originally published in Spain in 1984, Neruda is a biography that reads like a novel.
Teitelboim captures the whole sweep of Neruda’s eventful life (1904-1973), from his motherless childhood in Chile’s rainy southern forest to his unquiet death just twelve days after the violent overthrow of the Allende government he had served. He follows him through his bohemian youth as an impoverished university student in Santiago, his lonely existence in Southeast Asia consular outposts, his joyous discovery of Spain, and his lifelong devotion to poetry, love, Chile, and politics.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The author, a Chilean novelist and politician who was a confidant of Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) for 40 years, rescues the poet from the pedestal of myth in this sweepingly lyrical, highly personal biography. We follow Neruda through his successive incarnations as greenhorn from Chile's southern frontier to ambitious but starving bohemian, agonized bureaucrat, traveler, diplomat, ``resident on earth'' in Southeast Asia, exile and famous expatriate in Paris. His story includes such stranger-than-fiction episodes as the murder of his close friend Federico Garcia Lorca, which galvanized Neruda's diehard communism; bigamy accusations filed by his first wife, coached by politicians trying to discredit him; and his clandestine exit from Chile in 1948, when he narrowly avoided arrest. Teitelboim skillfully links the creative artist to the public figure by interweaving beautifully translated verses by Neruda with the main narrative. ( Nov. )
