Juan Carlos Onetti

Juan Carlos Onetti (1909–1994) was a Uruguayan writer. He was born in Montevideo and died in Madrid. In 1932, he published his first story in the Argentine newspaper La Prensa; his first novel, El pozo (The Well), followed in 1939. Alongside his literary work, he worked for the Reuters news agency and served for many years as director of Montevideo’s municipal libraries. His output includes eleven novels, numerous short stories, and two collections of articles. In La vida breve (1950; A Brief Life), he created the fictional world of the city of Santa María, which reappears in many later works. During Uruguay’s dictatorship, Onetti was imprisoned for several months; in 1975, he went into exile in Madrid. He received Uruguay’s National Prize for Literature in 1962 and 1985, and the Cervantes Prize in 1980.