Writer Carlos Fuentes, who played a dominant role in Latin America’s novel-writing boom by delving into the failed ideals of the Mexican revolution, has died at the age of 83 in a Mexico City hospital. Mexico’s National Council for Culture for the Arts confirmed the death of the country’s most celebrated novelist.
He wrote his first novel, Where the Air is Clear, at the age of 29, laying the foundation for a boom in Spanish contemporary literature during the 1960s and 1970s. Fuentes published an essay on the change of power in France in the newspaper Reforma the day he died.
His generation of writers, including Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa and Colombia’s Gabriel García Márquez, drew global attention to Latin American culture during a period when strongmen ruled much of the region.
The Death of Artemio Cruz, a novel about a post-revolutionary Mexico that failed to keep its promise of narrowing social gaps, brought Fuentes international attention. His other contemporary classics included Aura, Terra Nostra and The Good Conscience.