Hugo Wast

Hugo Wast

Gustavo Adolfo Martínez Zuviría (October 23, 1883 – March 28, 1962), best known under his pseudonym Hugo Wast, was a renowned Argentine novelist and script writer.[1][2]

Biography

Born Gustavo Martínez Zuviría in Córdoba, Argentina, his family relocated to Santa Fe, and he enrolled at the University of Santa Fe, receiving a law degree in 1907. Zuviría first used the pen name "Hugo Wast" for his 1911 novel, Flor de Durazno (Peach Blossom) - his first commercial success. He was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 1916 as a Conservative and received the National Literary Prize for his realist novel, Desierto de piedra (Stone Desert), but he was also known for his anti-semitism - established with his inflammatory Oro (Gold) - and his ideological association with French "integrisme," a Catholic nationalist doctrine associated with the National Front.[3]

He was appointed director of the National Library of Argentina in 1931,[4] and in 1943, as Minister of Public Instruction for the newly installed military government of General Pedro Ramírez, he reinstated religious education in public schools, thus breaking from a sixty-year secular tradition in Argentine education.[3]

A souring of relations with the Catholic Church on the part of President Juan Perón led to Wast's dismissal as National Library Director in 1955. The writer died in Buenos Aires in 1962.

Works

Collected works

Works in English translation

References

  1. ↑ Samperio, José María (1925). "An Author Whose Books Have Appealed to Thousands," Inter-America 8, pp. 535–9.
  2. ↑ Sedgwick, Ruth (1929). "Hugo Wast, Argentina's Most Popular Novelist," The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 116–126.
  3. 1 2 Rock, David. Authoritarian Argentina. University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
  4. ↑ Metz, Allan (1992). "Hugo Wast: The Anti-Semitic Director of Argentina's National Library, 1931-1955, Libraries & Culture, Vol. 27, No. 1, p. 36.

Further reading

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