Inspirational Quotes by Carlos Fuentes (Mexican novelist, diplomat)

Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012) was a Mexican novelist, short-story writer, playwright, critic, diplomat, and polemicist. A leading figure in Latin America’s 20th-century literary boom of the ’60s and ’70s, he published more than 60 works, including novels, short stories, essays, and plays in a career that spanned six decades.

Born in Panama City, Fuentes was the son of a diplomat. He was educated at the Colegio Frances Morelos, and then at the National University of Mexico and the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva, which led to a career in international affairs.

Fuentes eventually became a cultural attaché to the Mexican Embassy in Geneva (1950–52) and press secretary to the United Nations Information Centre, Mexico City. He served as the Mexican ambassador to France (1975–77) and held various teaching posts.

Fuentes published prolifically since his first collection of myth-inspired short stories, Los Días Enmascarados (‘The Masked Days’) in 1954. Many of his novels have been published in English, including Terra Nostra (1975; 1976.) Regarded as his masterpiece, Terra Nostra is the culmination and synthesis of his novel-writing technique and his ideas on the identity and destiny of Spain and Latin America.

Fuentes’s novels include Gringo Viejo (1985; The Old Gringo,) concerning the final days of American writer Ambrose Bierce. The first Mexican book in the New York Times bestseller list, it was made into a 1989 film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda. Fuentes’s other notable publications include Los años con Laura Díaz (1999; The Years with Laura Diaz, 2001,) Instinto de Inez (2001; Inez, 2003,) and La silla del águila (2003; The Eagle’s Throne, 2006.)

The University of California-Riverside’s Raymond Leslie Williams produced the analysis The Writings of Carlos Fuentes (1996.)

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