Carlos Fuentes

Fuentes was born in Panama City to a Mexican diplomat and spent his childhood shuttling between Washington, Santiago, and Buenos Aires, learning English before he properly learned Spanish. He entered Mexico's own foreign service as a young man, serving eventually as ambassador to France, while writing the novels that made him the Boom's tireless international ambassador for Latin American literature.

The Death of Artemio Cruz, narrating a dying revolutionary-turned-oligarch in three interleaved grammatical persons, established him alongside García Márquez and Vargas Llosa as one of the movement's central architects. He also wrote Aura, a slim second-person ghost story, and decades of essays arguing Latin America's fiction onto the world stage.

He continued writing and teaching, dividing his life between Mexico City, London, and Princeton, until his death in Mexico City in 2012.