Art & Literature
Chile's most famous contributions to literature have come from Nobel Prize poets Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, whose homes and birthplaces are now museums that attract literary pilgrims to Chile. Neruda's Heights of Machu Picchu, Canto General and the autobiographical Memoirs are widely available in English, however Mistral's works are harder to find.
Contemporary Chilean authors have earned an international reputation in the literary world. The most famous is novelist Isabel Allende, whose House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, and Eva Luna have all been international bestsellers. The increasingly popular Luis Sepúlveda has written stylish short novels like The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, and combines travel writing with imaginative fiction in Full Circle: a South American Journey. José Donoso's novel Curfew recalls the latter days of the recent military dictatorship, while Antonio Skármeta's novel Burning Patience (drawing on Neruda's life as a Chilean icon) was the inspiration for the Oscar-winning Italian film, Il Postino (The Postman).
Ariel Dorfman is an internationally known critic, novelist, and playwright who is also active in human rights causes. His play, Death and the Maiden, was made into an English-language film. The most successful play in the 1990s has been La Negra Ester - a dramatic adaptation of a poem dealing with characters working at a seaport brothel, written by Roberto Parra. La Negra Ester is revived yearly for audiences and is sold out weeks in advance. Santiago's Municipal Theater, since its creation in 1857, has played a critical role in disseminating the arts: visits by national and international celebrities entertain audiences with concerts, operas and ballets.
