Dressed in his usual leather jacket and jeans, the author Hernán Rivera Letelier (73) told different life anecdotes that led him to write. “I am not an intellectual, I am a storyteller,” he said in Antofagasta.
Recognized as the emblematic narrator of the Pampa and recently awarded the prestigious National Prize for Literature, Hernán Rivera Letelier (73) was in Puerto de Ideas Antofagasta.
“At 18 I revealed myself because I started to watch the news in the cinema, because before the news was given in the cinema before the movie, I began to see on the screen some images of young people abandoning homes, work, the hippie movement and the flower revolution, doing the free love on the beaches in the squares and I revealed myself. “I quit the company, I made a backpack and I went to do the flower revolution thinking above all about free love and on this trip it was like my initiation trip and my first poem,” said the author.
His works, impregnated with the arid landscapes of the Norte Grande and populated by a gallery of popular and extravagant characters, have left an indelible mark on national and contemporary literature.
For his first novel, Queen Isabel sang rancheras (Planeta, 1994), received the National Book and Reading Council Award. They also highlight Fatamorgana of love with band of musicians (Planeta, 1998), Saint Mary of the black flowers (Planet, 2002) and The trains go to purgatory (Alfaguara, 2011). His last book is The hidden life of a writer (The Truth About My Novels) (Alfaguara, 2022).
His novels have been republished several times and translated into more than fifteen languages. Among others, he has twice received the award from the National Council of Books and Reading, and was named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture (2001). In 2022 he was awarded the National Prize for Literature.
The author remembered the first poems he wrote when he was 18 years old. “Some people ask me what happened to poetry? I tell them that I write poetry on the side, I am a poet who writes novels,” he expressed.
In that sense, he pointed out that “the driving force of art in general is poetry. “Poetry is, as some say, the air of madness or the added element is that which gives life to what one writes or paints.”
“I say that to make a novel you need a good story, good language, good structure and something else that no one knows what it is and that is the only thing that matters, the only thing that matters is poetry and I call it the breath of life,” he added.
The author proudly referred to his 25 published books, and also recommended reading them all and “starting with anyone.”
“They are going to become addicted,” he said.
“At book fairs I see people with my 25 books, they put them together, they collect them. Queen Isabel sang rancheras It has been going on for 20 years and it is still sold, edited, read and wins awards,” he mentioned. And she maintained that she “longed to make a bestseller but now I’m a longselleras Violeta Parra said ‘no one beats me to humility’.”