Fernando del Paso
Mexico
Maximalist catalogues and encyclopedic wordplay stack into towering sentences, comic excess barely containing the real grief underneath.
Del Paso worked in advertising in Mexico City before turning fully to fiction, then spent close to two decades abroad, first with the BBC's Latin American service in London and later with UNESCO and Mexican diplomatic postings in Paris and elsewhere, absorbing the cosmopolitan range of reference that fills his fiction.
Palinuro of Mexico, his sprawling second novel, took years to write and folds a medical student's love affairs into the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre through catalogues, wordplay, and encyclopedic digression; he later wrote News from the Empire, an equally maximalist novel about Maximilian and Carlota's doomed Mexican monarchy.
He returned to Mexico late in life, taught, and received the National Prize for Arts and Sciences before his death in 2018.
Their books in the atlas
- 1977
Palinuro of MexicoLvl 9postmodern - 1987
News from the EmpireLvl 8historical fiction
Meanwhile, elsewhere
b. 1933Cees NooteboomNetherlandsWestern Europe · Netherlands
1930–2024Edna O'BrienIrelandWestern Europe · Ireland
b. 1933Penelope LivelyEnglandWestern Europe · England
1929–2023Milan KunderaCzechia / FranceRussia & Eastern Europe · Czechia / France
1931–2019Toni MorrisonUSANorth America · USA
1933–2023Cormac McCarthyUSANorth America · USAIf you like Paso, try
1932–1990Manuel PuigArgentinashared movement: After the Boom · kindred genres: political novel, postmodern · both write in Spanish
b. 1932Elena PoniatowskaMexicoshared movement: After the Boom · kindred genres: historical fiction, political novel · both write in Spanish
1928–1983Jorge IbargüengoitiaMexicoshared movement: After the Boom · kindred genres: historical fiction, satire · both write in Spanish
1928–2012Carlos FuentesMexicokindred genres: political novel, historical fiction · both write in Spanish · neighboring movements
1936–2025Mario Vargas LlosaPerukindred genres: political novel, historical fiction · both write in Spanish · neighboring movements
1917–2005Augusto Roa BastosParaguaykindred genres: historical fiction, political novel · both write in Spanish · neighboring movements