Evelio Rosero
Encyclopedia
Evelio Rosero Diago was born in Bogotá
, Colombia
, on March 20, 1958. He is a Colombian writer
and journalist
, who reached international acclaim after winning in 2006 the prestigious Tusquets Prize.
Evelio Rosero studied primary school in Colombia’s southern city of Pasto
, and high school in Bogotá, where he later attended Universidad Externado de Colombia
obtaining a degree in Journalism. When he was 21, he won Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Cuento del Quindío 1979 (National Short Story Award of Quindío), for his piece Ausentes (The Departed) that was published by Instituto Colombiano de Cultura in the book 17 Cuentos colombianos (17 Colombian Short Stories). In 1982 he was awarded with the Premio Iberoamericano de Libro de Cuentos Netzahualcóyotl, in Mexico City
for his earlier stories, and that same year, a novella under the title Papá es santo y sabio (Dad is holy and wise) won Spain
’s Premio Internacional de Novela Breve Valencia. After these early successess, Rosero fled to Europe
and lived first in Paris
and later in Barcelona
.
His first novel in 1984 was Mateo Solo (Mateo Alone), which began his trilogy known as Primera Vez (First Time). Mateo Solo is a story about a child convicted in his own home. Mateo knows about the outside world for what he sees through the windows. It is a novel of dazzling confinement, where sight is the main character: his sister, his aunt, his nanny all play their own game while allowing Mateo to keep his hope for identity in plotting his own escape.
With his second book in 1986, Juliana los mira (Juliana is watching), Evelio Rosero was translated into Swedish
, Norwegian
, Danish
and German
to great acclaim. Once again, the visual experience of a child, this time a girl, builds the world of grownups and family, unveiling all the brutality and meanness of adults as seen with her ingenuousness. Juliana’s world is her own house and family. As Juliana watches her parents and relatives, she builds them. Her sight alters objects as she contemplates them. This was the first book where Rosero involved other themes from Colombia’s tragical reality such as kidnapping
, presented here as a permanent threat that in the end justifies Juliana’s own confinement.
In 1988, El Incendiado (The Burning Man) was published. With this book, Rosero obtained a Proartes bachelor in Colombia and won in 1992 the II Premio Pedro Gómez Valderrama for the most outstanding book written between 1988 and 1992. The novel tells the stories of a group of teenagers from a famous school in Bogotá, Colegio Agustiniano Norte
, denouncing the education taught by the priest headmasters as “fool, arcaic, troglodite and morbid”.
To date, he has written nine novels, beginning with Señor que no conoce luna in 1992 and Cuchilla in 2000 which won a Norma-Fundalectura prize. Plutón (Pluto) published also in 2000, Los almuerzos (The lunches) in 2001, Juega el amor in 2002 and Los Ejércitos, which won in 2006 the prestigious 2nd Premio Tusquets Editores de Novela and also won in 2009 the prestigious Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
organized by the British newspaper The Independent
.
Evelio Rosero’s motto could be ‘a heart that feels, eyes that see’. He has explored in his oeuvre the hidden and alarming ways of life with their insanity and cruelties. New visions on good and evil, adolescence, love and vices and even the horror of Colombia’s longtime war are some of the main topics in his books. His stories, sometimes filled with fantastic characters, are beautiful metaphors of humanity and man’s fallibility.
Evelio Rosero currently lives in Bogotá. In 2006 he won Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Literatura (National Literature Prize) awarded in recognition of a life in letters by the Ministry of Culture. His work has been translated into a dozen European languages.
Bogotá
Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...
, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, on March 20, 1958. He is a Colombian writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, who reached international acclaim after winning in 2006 the prestigious Tusquets Prize.
Evelio Rosero studied primary school in Colombia’s southern city of Pasto
Pasto
Pasto, officially San Juan de Pasto, is the capital of the department of Nariño, located in southwest Colombia. The city is located in the "Atriz Valley", on the Andes cordillera, at the foot of the Galeras volcano, at an altitude of 8,290 feet above sea level...
, and high school in Bogotá, where he later attended Universidad Externado de Colombia
Universidad Externado de Colombia
The Universidad Externado de Colombia in Bogotá, Colombia, is a private university which grants 4 and 5 year primary and professional degrees as well as advanced 2-year Magister degrees. Instruction is primarily in Spanish. The dean is Dr...
obtaining a degree in Journalism. When he was 21, he won Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Cuento del Quindío 1979 (National Short Story Award of Quindío), for his piece Ausentes (The Departed) that was published by Instituto Colombiano de Cultura in the book 17 Cuentos colombianos (17 Colombian Short Stories). In 1982 he was awarded with the Premio Iberoamericano de Libro de Cuentos Netzahualcóyotl, in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
for his earlier stories, and that same year, a novella under the title Papá es santo y sabio (Dad is holy and wise) won Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
’s Premio Internacional de Novela Breve Valencia. After these early successess, Rosero fled to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and lived first in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and later in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
.
His first novel in 1984 was Mateo Solo (Mateo Alone), which began his trilogy known as Primera Vez (First Time). Mateo Solo is a story about a child convicted in his own home. Mateo knows about the outside world for what he sees through the windows. It is a novel of dazzling confinement, where sight is the main character: his sister, his aunt, his nanny all play their own game while allowing Mateo to keep his hope for identity in plotting his own escape.
With his second book in 1986, Juliana los mira (Juliana is watching), Evelio Rosero was translated into Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
to great acclaim. Once again, the visual experience of a child, this time a girl, builds the world of grownups and family, unveiling all the brutality and meanness of adults as seen with her ingenuousness. Juliana’s world is her own house and family. As Juliana watches her parents and relatives, she builds them. Her sight alters objects as she contemplates them. This was the first book where Rosero involved other themes from Colombia’s tragical reality such as kidnapping
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
, presented here as a permanent threat that in the end justifies Juliana’s own confinement.
In 1988, El Incendiado (The Burning Man) was published. With this book, Rosero obtained a Proartes bachelor in Colombia and won in 1992 the II Premio Pedro Gómez Valderrama for the most outstanding book written between 1988 and 1992. The novel tells the stories of a group of teenagers from a famous school in Bogotá, Colegio Agustiniano Norte
Colegio Agustiniano Norte
Agustiniano Norte School is a private, catholic, independent school for men, teaching students from grades kindergarten - 11, located in Bogota, Colombia...
, denouncing the education taught by the priest headmasters as “fool, arcaic, troglodite and morbid”.
To date, he has written nine novels, beginning with Señor que no conoce luna in 1992 and Cuchilla in 2000 which won a Norma-Fundalectura prize. Plutón (Pluto) published also in 2000, Los almuerzos (The lunches) in 2001, Juega el amor in 2002 and Los Ejércitos, which won in 2006 the prestigious 2nd Premio Tusquets Editores de Novela and also won in 2009 the prestigious Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent to honour contemporary fiction in translation in the United Kingdom. The award was first launched in 1990 and ran for five years before falling into abeyance. It was revived in 2001 with the financial support...
organized by the British newspaper The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
.
Evelio Rosero’s motto could be ‘a heart that feels, eyes that see’. He has explored in his oeuvre the hidden and alarming ways of life with their insanity and cruelties. New visions on good and evil, adolescence, love and vices and even the horror of Colombia’s longtime war are some of the main topics in his books. His stories, sometimes filled with fantastic characters, are beautiful metaphors of humanity and man’s fallibility.
Evelio Rosero currently lives in Bogotá. In 2006 he won Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Literatura (National Literature Prize) awarded in recognition of a life in letters by the Ministry of Culture. His work has been translated into a dozen European languages.
Los Ejércitos
Los Ejércitos (The Armies) is a novel of a country torn apart by war. Ismael, a retired old school teacher and his wife, Otilia, live morosely and modestly in the town of San José. Ismael loves to spy on his neighbor’s wife, making his own wife to feel embarrassed, and there is a sense of idyll on everything going on until some family members begin to disappear and fear takes over the inhabitants of San José. One morning, after his usual walk, Ismael finds out that some soldiers of God knows what armies had taken away his neighbors. His wife had been looking for him and unsuccessfully he tries to find her instead. The fighting intensifies from all sides, and while the citizens of San José decide to run away and join the hordes of displaced peasants of Colombia, Ismael chooses to stay in the blasted and ghost township.Novels
- Mateo solo. Entreletras, Bogotá. 1984
- Juliana los mira. Anagrama, Barcelona. 1986
- El incendiado. Editorial Planeta, Bogotá. 1988
- Papá es santo y sabio. Calos Valencia Editores, Bogotá. 1989
- Señor que no conoce luna. Editorial Planeta, Bogotá. 1992
- Cuchilla. Editorial Norma, Bogotá. 2000
- Plutón. Editorial Espasa-Calpe, Madrid. 2000
- Los almuerzos. Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín. 2001
- Juega el amor. Editorial Panamericana, Bogotá. 2002
- El hombre que quería escribir una carta. Editorial Norma, Bogotá. 2002
- En el lejero. Editorial Norma, Bogotá. 2003
- Los escapados. Editorial Norma, Bogotá. 2006
- Los ejércitos. Tusquets Editores, Barcelona. 2006
- The Armies. New Directions Publishing, 2009. Translated by Anne McLean.
Children's books
- El aprendiz de mago y otros cuentos de miedo. Colcultura, Bogotá. 1992
- Cuento para matar a un perro(y otros cuentos). Carlos Valencia Editores, Bogotá. 1989
- Las esquinas más largas. Editorial Panamericana, Bogotá. 1998
Poetry
- El eterno monólogo de Llo (poema novelado). Testimonio. 1981
- Las lunas de Chía. Fondo Editorial Universidad Eafit, Medellín. 2004