Horacio Quiroga
Uruguay
Taut, economical sentences that build inexorably toward a single act of violence or accident, dread announced from the very first line.
Quiroga's life was marked by a chain of violent accidents rarely matched even in fiction as dark as his own: as a young man he accidentally shot and killed a close friend while inspecting a pistol, and both his father and stepfather died in separate gun accidents years apart.
He moved to the jungle province of Misiones to farm and hunt, living in near-isolation in conditions that supplied the snakebites, fevers, and sudden deaths of Stories of Love, Madness, and Death. Deeply influenced by Poe and Kipling, he wrote an often-cited 'Decalogue' laying down rules for the modern short story.
His first wife died by suicide in 1915; diagnosed with prostate cancer decades later, Quiroga took his own life in a Buenos Aires hospital in 1937.
Lines of influence
No descendants recorded, yet.
Their books in the atlas
- 1917
Stories of Love, Madness, and DeathLvl 4short story collection
Meanwhile, elsewhere
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1809–1849Edgar Allan PoeUnited Statesshaped Quiroga · kindred genres: gothic, short story collection
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1884–1969Rómulo GallegosVenezuelashared movement: Foundational Latin American Realism · both write in Spanish · same region & era
1886–1927Ricardo GüiraldesArgentinashared movement: Foundational Latin American Realism · both write in Spanish · same region & era
1899–1986Jorge Luis BorgesArgentinakindred genres: short story collection · both write in Spanish · neighboring movements