Book Description

The first authoritative biography of the most enduring poet of the twentieth century 'This is a magnificent biography' HAROLD PINTER 'Feinstein's biography is fuelled by an infectious enthusiasm for the poems: this is its greatest strength ... it is crammed with adventure stories, narrow scrapes, passionate encounters' GUARDIAN 'A magnificently researched work ... Feinstein brilliantly elucidates the main driving forces behind Neruda's life and work' INDEPENDENT __________________________ Poet and politician, Pablo Neruda continues to cast a long shadow across the world fifty years after his death in the wake of the 1973 Chilean coup. From the lyricism of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair and the melancholy of Residence on Earth to the direct simplicity of the Elemental Odes and the epic grandeur of the Canto General, Neruda's range was vast. Few Nobel laureates have enjoyed such enduring popularity. Neruda was a complicated man, both politically and emotionally. In this first authoritative biography, Adam Feinstein draws on revealing interviews with his closest friends, acquaintances and surviving relatives, as well as newly discovered documents. He follows Neruda's life from a sickly childhood in Chile to political engagement and literary fame, until his death in 1973, within days of the death of Salvador Allende in the coup that brought Pinochet to power. This acclaimed biography, now updated with an afterword about the recent exhumation of Neruda's remains, tells the full story of an iconic twentieth-century figure for the first time.