Jose Donoso was a Chilean novelist and short-story writer who was important in the development of the Latin American new novel. He used dark surrealism, black comedy, and social satire to explore the lives of decaying aristocrats in a morally disintegrating society.
Background
Jose Donoso was born on the 5th of October 1924 in Santiago, Region Metropolitana, Chile. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. He was the son of the doctor José Donoso Donoso and Alicia Yáñez, niece of the writer Eliodoro Yanez, founder of the newspaper The Nation.
Education
He studied in The Grange School. Then he attended to the Pedagogical Institute of Santiago and after studying there for three years, Donoso attended Princeton University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1951.
In 1951 Donoso traveled to Mexico and Central America. He then returned to Chile and started teaching how to teach at the Universidad Católica (Catholic University) and in the Kent School. Donoso’s first published works were short stories, and his collection Veraneo y otros cuentos (“Summer Vacation and Other Stories”) appeared in 1955. He established his reputation with the debut novel Coronación (1957; Coronation), which won him the William Faulkner Foundation Prize in 1962.
He started writing for the magazine Ercilla in 1960 when he found himself traveling through Europe, from where he sent his reports. After he continued as an editor and literary critic of that publication until 1965. Afterwards he collaborated with the Mexican Siempre.
Achievements
Membership
Latin American Boom
Connections
In 1961 he married with painter María Ester Serrano, known as María Pilar Donoso (1926–1997), daughter of the Chilean Juan Enrique Serrano and the Bolivian Graciela Mendieta. Donoso had known her the preceding year in Buenos Aires.