Francisco Herrera Luque

Francisco José Herrera Luque (Caracas, December 14, 1927-Caracas, April 15, 1991) was a Venezuelan doctor-psychiatrist, novelist, essayist, and diplomat. Among his works, the novels stand out: Boves, el Capercaillie (1972), Los Amos del Valle (1979) and La Luna de Fausto (1983).

Biography

Son of Francisco Herrera Guerrero and María Luisa Luque Carvallo. In 1956 he married María Margarita Terán Austria from whose union five children were born. He studied at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) and then at the University of Salamanca (1952) graduating as a doctor. In Madrid he specializes in psychiatry and produces various scientific papers. His doctoral thesis originated the work Los viajeros de Indias (1961), which deals with the psychopathic burdens that the Spanish conquerors left on Venezuelan society. His concern for knowing the origins of the personalities of the inhabitants of Spanish America led him to the study of heredity and genetics.

He founded the chair of psychiatry at the UCV of which he became a tenured professor and was ambassador of Venezuela in Mexico in the mid-1970s. As a writer and author of novels, his historical work is based on truthful and documented research. His last books: The Four Kings of the Deck, Bolívar Live, 1998 and The Flight of Alcatraz , are posthumous publications.

During the final years of his life and after his death his works gained great renown, making him one of Venezuela's best-selling writers.^{[citation required]} His success was to combine the Venezuelan mythological sense with the real facts of history, he filled the mold of reality with the collective fables of the Venezuelan. He inquired beyond the official history of Venezuela and created a parallel narrative to it.

He combined his scientific side with his literary side, never neglecting the study of the origins of the Venezuelan, which in his thesis was revealed by studying the personalities of the first inhabitants of the colony. Francisco Herrera Luque died in Caracas on April 15, 1991, due to a heart attack.

In 1992 the Francisco Herrera Luque Foundation was created to maintain the legacy of this Venezuelan writer.