Author. He received international acclaim for being an award-winning Chilean novelist and short-story writer. He contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. In his writing, he often used black comedy, which sadly underscores the senselessness of tragedies in life while making humor of the situation. Born Jose Donoso Yanez into a well-to-do family, his father and both grandfathers were physicians, his two brothers were lawyers, and great uncle was the editor of a large newspaper in Chile. After attending local private schools and having private tutoring for English, he attended Princeton University in New Jersey on a scholarship graduating with a Bachelor's in Arts Degree in 1951. He never was a good student, but had two stories written in English that were published in the college newspaper. In the 1950s, he taught English Literature at the Catholic University of Chile and the University of Chile and was a journalist for the weekly magazine “Ercilla.” He was appointed as Professor of Creative Writing in the School of Journalism at the University of Chile. In 1961 he traveled to Argentina to write, married Maria de Pilar Serrano and later, they adopted a daughter. The couple traveled to Mexico City for a month-long writers' conference but he decided to stay for years writing two novels and employed as a newspaper journalist. Leaving Mexico, he became a lecturer in a writer's workshop at the University of Iowa and Colorado State University from 1965 to 1967 before relocating to Spain. Sources state that his self-imposed exile from Chile was political. His literary career began in Chile with the publication of the Spanish written, “China,” in 1954, which appeared in “Anthology of the New Chilean Story.” In 1955 he published a collection of short-stories, “Summertime and other Stories,” and in 1956 received the Municipal Prize for Short Stories. In 1962 he was the recipient of the William Faulkner Foundation Prize for his first novel in 1957, “Coronacion.” Though it took years to write and is a 540-page novel, “The Obscene Bird of Night,” is considered his 1970 masterpiece as it dealt with dark psychological problems. Translated into English, it was successfully released in the United States in 1973. His 1978 novel, “A House in the Country,” examines the breakdown of social classes in postcolonial Latin America, and he considered this one of his best works. In their Spanish titles, his other books include "Historia Personal del Boom," "Tres Novelistas Burgueses," and "El Lugar sin Límites". He returned to Chile in late 1981. After authoring a number of anti-government articles, he was briefly detained in 1985 after he protested the discharge of dissident writers from their teaching positions. His later writings include in 1981 “The Garden Next Door,” in 1986 “Hopelessness” and “Curfew,” in 1990 “Still Life with Pipe,” and in 1995 “Where The Elephants Are Going to Die.” “Curfew” told the story of Chile under the rule of General Augusto Pincochet and was successfully received internationally. Shortly before his death from cancer, he was the recipient of the Great Cross of Civil Merit in 1995 and published a memoir, “Conjectures on the Memory of my Tribe” in 1996, which was read in part as tribute to him in October 2007 at the Casa de America Symposium in Madrid, Spain. He was the recipient of the National Prize for Literature in Chile in 1990, the Critics Award in Spain , the Mondello Prize in Italy, and the Roger Caillois Prize in France. His books have been translated to 17 different languages. According to his long obituary published in the “New York Times,” he wrote more than 20 novels and collections of short stories, many translated into English, include “Coronation,” “Charleston and Other Stories,” “Hell Has No Limits,” “A House in the Country,” “The Garden Next Door” and “Curfew.”