Alberto Fuguet

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Alberto Fuguet de Goyeneche (born 1964) is a popular Chilean writer and film director who has risen to critical prominence in the 1990s as part of the movement known as the New Chilean Narrative.

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[edit] Biography

Fuguet was born in Chile but lived in Encino, California until he was 13. He is a graduate of the Universidad de Chile's School of Journalism.

In 1999 Time called Fuguet one of the 50 most important Latin Americans for the next millennium. In 2003, he was featured on the cover of the international edition of Newsweek magazine to represent a new generation of Latino writers.

Fuguet currently heads the program in Contemporary Audiovisual Culture at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado's School of Journalism in Santiago. He also writes for the newspaper El Mercurio and is at work on two new projects: the film Perdidos and the book Missing.

[edit] Writing

Fuguet's work is characterized by a United States/Chilean hybridity, with constant cross-references to the popular cultures of the two nations. In 1996 he co-edited (with Sergio Gómez) the anthology McOndo, whose title combined McDonalds with Macondo, the fictional town created by Gabriel García Márquez. McOndo represented popular culture while largely rejecting the use of magical realism in contemporary Latin American fiction.

Fuguet's other books are the short story collections Sobredosis and Cortos; the novels Mala onda, Por favor, rebobinar, Tinta roja and Las películas de mi vida; and the non-fiction collection Primera parte. Mala onda, which narrates a week in the life of a Santiago teenager in 1980, has received wide acclaim. Tinta roja has been made into a film. Las películas de mi vida is a semi-autobiographical novel about a Chilean seismologist who grew up in California and later returned to Chile. Its protagonist recounts his life with references to movies he has watched. Some of Fuguet's work, including Mala onda and Las películas de mi vida, has been translated into English and published in the United States.

2007 saw the release of Road Story, a graphic novel illustrated by Gonzalo Martínez based on one of the stories in Cortos. Under the Alfaguara imprint, the book is reputed by Fuguet and by his sometime-collaborator Francisco Ortega to be be the first Chilean graphic novel issued by a major publisher.

[edit] Novels

[edit] Short stories

  • Sobredosis
  • Cortos

[edit] Graphic novel

  • Road Story

[edit] Film

In 2005 Fuguet directed the film Se Arrienda which he co-wrote with Francisco Ortega. He also wrote the script for En un lugar de la noche (Martín Rodríguez, 2000).

[edit] Bibliography

  • Fuguet, Alberto. "Magical Neoliberalism". Foreign Policy Jul-Aug 2001: 66-73.

[edit] External links