Álvaro Mutis Jaramillo was born on August 25, 1923, and died on September 22, 2013. He was a Colombian poet, novelist, and essayist. His most famous work is a series of novels called The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, which focuses on the character Maqroll el Gaviero. In 1991, he received the International Nonino Prize in Italy. He was honored with the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 2001 and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2002.

Early life

Álvaro Mutis was born in Bogotá and lived in Brussels from age two until eleven. His father, Santiago Mutis Dávila, worked as a diplomat there. Mutis and his family returned to Colombia by ship during summer vacations. During these visits, they stayed at his grandfather’s coffee and sugar cane plantation in Coello. For Álvaro Mutis, the experiences of these early years, reading books by Jules Verne and Pablo Neruda’s Residencia en la tierra, and exposure to "el trópico" (the tropics) were the main influences on his writing. Mutis attended high school at the Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario in Bogotá, where he studied under the Colombian poet Eduardo Carranza. Though he did not complete his schooling, he began his literary career in Bogotá as a poet and joined the Cántico group, which formed in the 1940s. In 1948, Mutis and Carlos Patiño published a small book of poems titled La balanza. From 1956 onward, he lived in Mexico City, where he became well-known after Octavio Paz, a respected writer, praised his early poetry. The first major recognition of Álvaro Mutis’s work came in 1974, when he received Colombia’s National Prize for Letters.

Literary career

Mutis' poetry was first published in 1948, and his first short stories in 1978. His first novella about Maqroll, La nieve del Almirante (The Snow of the Admiral), was published in 1986 and was widely praised by both readers and critics. He has won many literary awards, including the Prix Médicis (France, 1989), Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras (Spain, 1997), Premio Miguel de Cervantes (Spain, 2001), and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (United States, 2002), for The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, a book that includes all seven novellas about Maqroll the Gaviero.

Mutis worked as a writer of poetry and prose while also holding many different jobs outside of literature. Like his character Maqroll, Mutis traveled widely in his professional roles, including five years as Standard Oil’s public relations director and over 20 years as a sales manager for Twentieth Century Fox and Columbia Pictures in their Latin American television divisions. Latin Americans first heard his voice when he narrated the Spanish-language television version of The Untouchables.

In the 1950s, Mutis spent 15 months in a Mexican prison called Palacio de Lecumberri because he used money meant for charity to help friends who were in danger from the military government in Colombia. After he fled to Mexico, the Mexican government gave in to pressure from Colombia and imprisoned him. When the Colombian dictatorship ended, the charges against him were dropped, and he was released. His time in prison had a lasting effect on his life and work, and it is described in the book Diario de Lecumberri.

Critical reception

Gabriel García Márquez, a Nobel Prize winner and close friend of Mutis, described him as "one of the greatest writers of our time."

Mutis's works are most widely read in Latin America and Europe. However, he is not well known in English-speaking countries, likely because his writing is difficult to classify. His literary work does not fit the typical definition of "Latin American Literature" used in American academic settings. Maqroll, Mutis's most famous character, has unknown origin, nationality, age, and appearance. He is not clearly from Latin America and does not reflect typical Latin American traits. Maqroll is a lone traveler who remains emotionally distant from those he meets and loves. He searches for meaning during times of violence and cruelty. Because of this, some literary critics have compared Maqroll to Sophocles's character Oedipus.

Political views

Mutis, a close friend and relative of Nicolás Gómez Dávila, described himself as "reactionary, legitimist, and monarchist." He was called an "old reactionary" and coauthored the 2002 Manifesto Against the Death of the Spirit and the Earth. This document was described as an effort to support the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite.

Works

• Diario de Lecumberri (1960)
• The Snow of the Admiral (1986)
• Ilona Arrives with the Rain (1987) (loosely adapted into the 1996 film of the same name)
• The Tramp Steamer's Last Port of Call (1988)
• Un Bel Morir (1989)
• Amirbar (1990)
• Abdul Bashur, Dreamer of Ships (1991)
• Triptych on Sea and Land (1993)
• The Adventures of Maqroll: Four Novellas (1995), which includes four previously published works: The Tramp Steamer's Last Port of Call, Amirbar, Abdul Bashur, Dreamer of Ships, and Triptych on Sea and Land
• Summa de Maqroll el Gaviero: Poetry 1948–1997 (1997)
• The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll (2002), which includes seven previously published novellas: The Snow of the Admiral, Ilona Arrives with the Rain, Un Bel Morir, The Tramp Steamer's Last Port of Call, Amirbar, Abdul Bashur, Dreamer of Ships, and Triptych on Sea and Land
• Maqroll's Prayer and Other Poems (2024)

Awards and honors

• 1988 Premio Xavier Villaurrutia
• 1991 International Nonino Prize in Italy
• 1997 Premio Príncipe de Asturias
• 1997 Reina Sofía de Poesía
• 1997 Grinzane Cavour Prize
• 2001 Miguel de Cervantes Prize
• 2002 Neustadt International Prize for Literature