Augusto Monterroso

Augusto Monterroso Bonilla (Tegucigalpa, December 21, 1921-Mexico City, February 7, 2003), known as Tito Monterroso, was a Honduran writer. nationalized Guatemalan and exiled in Mexico. He is considered one of the masters of minification and, briefly, he addressed complex and fascinating themes.

Biography

Early Years

He was born on December 21, 1921 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. He was the son of the Guatemalan Vicente Monterroso and the Honduran Amelia Bonilla. He spent his childhood and adolescence in Guatemala, a country that he considered key in his formation, and to which he He himself considered his homeland:

The medium and the time I formed, the Guatemala of the last thirty and the first forty, of the dictator Jorge Ubico and his fourteen years of unexplored despotism, and of the Second World War, undoubtedly contributed to the fact that he now thinks as I think and responds to the present moment in the way I do.

Exile in Mexico

When the revolts against the then Guatemalan dictator Jorge Ubico broke out in 1944, Monterroso played an active role, which led him to jail when General Federico Ponce Vaides took power. However, in September of that same year, Monterroso managed to escape from prison and requested political asylum in the Mexican embassy. After the October Revolution in Guatemala in 1944, led by Jacobo Arbenz, Monterroso was appointed to a position in the Guatemalan consulate in Mexico, where he remained until 1953. After the fall of Arbenz -and after a brief stay in La Paz, Bolivia- he went into exile in Chile, to later return to Mexico in 1956, a country where he settled permanently, wrote and published all his literary work.

Literary career

Monterroso began publishing his texts in 1959, the year in which the first edition of his first book of short stories was published: Obras completas y otros cuentos; set of incisive narrations where the fundamental features of his narrative began to be noticed: a concise, brief, apparently simple prose that is nevertheless full of cultured references, as well as a masterful handling of parody, caricature, and black humor.

His short story The Dinosaur was considered the shortest short story in world literature until the appearance of El emigrante, by Luis Felipe Lomelí. This has been included in a dozen anthologies and has been translated into several languages, in addition to having a critical edition by Lauro Zavala entitled The Annotated Dinosaur. Monterroso rightly asserted about this short story that "its interpretations were as endless as the universe itself.

In 1970, Monterroso won the Magda Donato Award and in 1975 the Xavier Villaurrutia Award for his collection of poems Los ilusiones perdidas: antología personal, and in 1988 he was awarded the Aztec Eagle Award, for his contribution to the culture of Mexico. He was also awarded the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages (Mexico) in 1996 and in 1997 the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala awarded him the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize for Literature. Finally, in 2000 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters in recognition of his entire literary career.In the jury's own words:

His narrative and essay work constitutes a whole literary universe of extraordinary ethical and aesthetic wealth, of which a certain and melancholic sense of humor could be highlighted. (...) His narrative work has transformed the short story.

Death

Monterroso died of cardiac arrest on February 7, 2003, at the age of 81. In 2008, his wife, the Mexican writer Bárbara Jacobs, donated her artistic legacy to the University of Oviedo.

Work

Novels

• 1978: The rest is silence

Stories

• 1959: Complete works (and other stories)
• 1969: The black sheep and other fables
• 1983: The magic word
• 1983: The master cricket
• 2003: Literature and life

Poetry

• 1985: Lost illusions. Personal anthology

Essays

• 1998: The cow
• 2002: Birds of Hispanic America

Others

• 1972: Perpetual movement
• 1981: Travel to the centre of the fable
• 1987: The letter e. Fragments of a newspaper
• 1992: That fauna
• 1993: Gold seekers

Awards and recognitions

• 1970: Magda Donato Award
• 1975: Xavier Villaurrutia Award for Personal anthology
• 1988: Aztec Eagle Decoration
• 1996: FIL Prize for Literature in Roman Languages
• 1997: Premio Nacional de Literatura Miguel Ángel Asturias
• 2000: Prince of Asturias Award for Letters