Manuel Rojas

• Name — Manuel Rojas • Born — 8 January 1896 • Birthplace — Buenos Aires, Argentina • Birth Name — Manuel Rojas Sepúlveda • Died — 11 March 1973 • Place of death — Santiago, Chile • Awards — National Prize for Literature (1957)

Rojas was born in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the son of Chilean parents. In 1899 his family returned to Santiago, but in 1903, after his father's death, his mother returned to Buenos Aires, where he attended school until the age of eleven. In 1912, at the age of sixteen, he decided to return alone to Chile. Once he arrived, he got involved with intellectuals and anarchist groups, while working various jobs as an unskilled labourer. He worked as a house painter, electrician, agricultural worker, railroad handyman, loading ships, tailor's apprentice, cobbler, ship guard, and actor in small-time itinerant groups. Many of the situations and characters he encountered there later became part of his fictional world. He returned to Argentina in 1921, publishing his first poems there. Back in Chile, he worked intensely in his narrative production and, at the same time, worked in the National Library and at the Universidad de Chile press. He married María Baeza and had three children. He joined the Los Tiempos and the Las Ultimas Noticias newspapers as a Linotype operator first and ultimately worked on Santiago newspapers as a journalist, all the while working at the Hipódromo Chile (Santiago racetrack). After the death of his wife, he married again and started to travel. He received the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 1957. He toured Europe, South America and the Middle East. He became a university professor of Chilean and American Literature in the US and at the Universidad de Chile. His works have, as a central theme, the representation of the instability, misery and marginality of the members of the working class. The development of the psychological and existential complexities of his characters established a difference between his work and prior literary movements (criollismo, mundonovismo), that were characterized by a less complex view of individuality. He died in Santiago on 11 March 1973.

He began to contribute to the anarchist journals The Buenos Aires Protest and The Battle of Santiago, where he wrote articles about politics, education, and society (for the 100-year anniversary of the return to Chile, in 2012, Jorge Guerra, the president of the Manuel Rojas Foundation, compiled the texts from the Chilean journals and signed them a few times with his name. He signed others with the pen-name Tremalk Naik, in the anthology A young man at war).

Novels • Lanchas en la bahía, 1932 • La ciudad de los Césares, 1936 • Hijo de ladrón, 1951 • Mejor que el vino, 1958 • Punta de rieles, 1960 • Sombras contra el muro, 1964 • La oscura vida radiante, 1971 Short Stories • Hombres del Sur, 1926 • El Delincuente, 1929 • El Bonete Maulino, 1943 • Imágenes de infancia, 1955 • El vaso de leche, 1927 Poems • Poéticas, 1921 • Tonada del transeúnte, 1927 • Travesía, 1934 • Desecha rosa, 1954 Essays • De la poesía a la revolución, 1938 • José Joaquin Vallejo, 1942 • Chile:cinco navegantes y un astrónomo, 1956 • Los costumbristas chilenos, 1957 • El árbol siempre verde, 1960 • Antología autobiográfica, 1962 • Esencias del pais chileno, 1963 • Historia Breve de la literatura chilena, 1964 • Pasé por México un dia, 1964 • Manual de literatura chilena, 1964 • Viaje al país de los profetas, 1969 • Justo Arteaga Alemparte, 1974

Manuel Rojas is recorded as journalist, novelist, poet, writer and trade unionist. Recognition and collections. Rojas received Atenea Award and National Prize for Literature (Chile).