José Donoso

An intimate and critical chronicle of one of the most outstanding generations in the literature of the American continent. In Personal History of the Boom, you'll encounter the most prominent figures of those years (Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, among others). These are fellow travellers who appear in their most personal moments - literary gatherings, camaraderie over meals, various celebrations - providing us with an endearing and engaging narrative, not without controversies and gossip.

This publication includes the texts that the author added for the second edition of this book, Ten Years Later, and The Domestic 'Boom' of María Pilar Donoso, as well as other writings that rescue unpublished and lost pieces from the author's archives or those published in the press and previously untraceable. From there, Donoso once again engages with the margins of that era, including foundational authors like Manuel Puig or Juan Carlos Onetti, in addition to the experience of exile and "desexilio" (the return from exile).

As Cecilia García-Huidobro Mc. notes in her enlightening preface: “It could not be otherwise, as Personal History of the Boom avoids definitions to outline the literary experience as a life experience. This makes it sensitive to the fluctuations of taste, enabling the construction and reconstruction of genealogies based on new voices and reinterpretations. This edition aims to face this challenge head-on.”