Manuel Rojas
Manuel Rojas Sepúlveda (maˈnwel ˈroxas; 8 January 1896 – 11 March 1973) was a Chilean writer and journalist.
Also recorded as Manuel Rojas Sepúlveda
Manuel Rojas

Rodrigo Fernández · CC BY-SA 4.0
- 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)
- Nationality
- Chile.
- Occupation
- journalist, novelist, poet, writer, trade unionist and essayist.
- Honours
- Atenea Award and National Prize for Literature (Chile).
- Languages
- Spanish.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
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Documentary summary
Manuel Rojas Sepúlveda (maˈnwel ˈroxas; 8 January 1896 – 11 March 1973) was a Chilean writer and journalist.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
Manuel Rojas (1896–1973) was an essayist, journalist and novelist, among other activities, of Chilean nationality. The essayist was born in Buenos Aires and died in Santiago. Manuel Rojas worked for University of Chile.
Languages used include Spanish. Works are held at Memoria Chilena. Honours include Atenea Award and National Prize for Literature (Chile).
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
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- Identity
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Authority files
wikidata · Q1891716
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• 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)
Biography
Biography
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.
Youth
Youth
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).
Works
Works
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
Identity
Identity
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).

El guionista de cómics Christian Morales firma ejemplares de la novela gráfica Hijo de ladrón basada en la obra homónima del escritor Manuel Rojas en la Feria Internacional del Libro de Santiago 2016
Rodrigo Fernández

Mira en homenaje al escritor chileno Manuel Rojas en el barrio Yungay, Santiago
Aeveraal
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1896
Manuel Rojas born at Buenos Aires.
1973
Manuel Rojas died at Santiago.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Buenos Aires.
Birth place
Santiago.
Death place
Beginnings as a writer
His first published literature was a poem, El soneto el gusano (The Sonnet the Worm), that in 1917, appeared in the magazine, Los Diez (The Ten). He belonged to a group four years later, in 1921, and during his time in Mendoza formed a theater company. He published a book of poems under the name, "Poetic" in the magazine, Ideas and figures. The following year, he received his first award with his story, La laguna (The Lake), which won the second prize in the contest for the Buenos Aires magazine, La Montaña (The Mountain). His first book of short stories, Hombres del sur (Men of the South), appeared in 1926. In 1928, the same year his mother died, he was hired as a librarian in the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile (The National Library of Chile). His first wife, Maria, was a professor and poet. The death of his wife would be the inspiration for his poem, Deshecha Rosa (Lost Rose). The following year, his second story book, El delincuente (The offender), came out which contained the famous, El vaso de leche, (The Glass of Milk). His first novel, Lanchas en la bahía (Boats in the Bay), which he wrote in 1930, came out in 1932. In 1936, he published his second novel, La Ciudad de los Césares (The City of the Caesars), and, after the death of his wife, he took over as director of the University of Chile's printing press. Years later, Rojas would declare in an interview his regret for writing this novel, criticizing it for not only being bad, but also extremely fictional. "The writer is the son of his experience. A writer without experience is an unimaginable being", he insisted.
Legacy
In 2012, Chile's National Council of Culture and the Arts established the Manuel Rojas Ibero-American Narrative Award in his honor.
Primary material
Documents and archives
scholarly publication
- Bibliografía completa de Manuel Rojas, Anales de Literatura Chilena, 2021
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 2021
- Manuel Rojas, primer anarquismo. Recuerdo y relato, Anales de Literatura Chilena, 2021
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 2021
scholarly index
- OpenAlex author record A5051114490 for Manuel Rojas.
Unverified · OpenAlex
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q1891716: Manuel Rojas
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
scholarly publication
Verifiedscholarly publication
Manuel Rojas, primer anarquismo. Recuerdo y relato, Anales de Literatura Chilena, 2021Crossref registry
Verifiedscholarly index
Partially resolvedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q1891716: Manuel RojasWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
38,960 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
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