Influential Mexican literary and political figure Carlos Fuentes will deliver the Association of Latin American Students Lecture for the Assembly Series at 11 a.m. Oct. 12 in Graham Chapel.
His talk is titled “Celebrating Cervantes and Don Quixote.”
Fuentes is a prolific writer known for his cultural, political and historical insights on Latin America. Much of his writing addresses the search for cultural identity and the examination of cultural tensions within Latin America and the United States.
Among his major works are Where the Air is Clearer (1958), The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), A Change of Skin (1967), Terra Nostra (1975), The Hydra Head (1978), The Campaign (1990) and Inez (2002). His novel The Old Gringo was the first U.S. best-seller by a Mexican author and was made into a film starring Jane Fonda and Gregory Peck.
His latest novel is The Eagle’s Throne.
This I Believe: A Life From A to Z (2004) was awarded the Spanish Royal Academy’s prize for the best book of the year.
Fuentes has also written plays, short stories and essays, and has helped create a literary magazine, Revista Mexicana de Literatura.
For his writing, he has received both the National Prize in Literature, Mexico’s highest literary award, and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious award for Spanish-language writers.
He has taught at Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, and Cambridge universities and is professor-at-large at Brown University.
Fuentes’ writing is informed by his international upbringing and his experience in diplomacy.
The son of a Mexican diplomat, he spent much of his childhood in Washington, D.C. After earning a law degree from Mexico’s National Autonomous University, Fuentes followed his father’s path as a diplomat and served as Mexican ambassador to France, but soon changed course and began his literary career.
Fuentes also is known for his political commentaries and regularly contributes to the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Assembly Series lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, go online to assemblyseries.wustl.edu or call 935-4620.