The Spanish-Chilean writer George EdwardsCervantes Award 1999, has died this Friday in Madrid at 91 years old. Writer and journalist, he was an academic of Language in Chile and a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy. He combined literature with regular collaborations in Chilean and international newspapers and conferences and courses at American universities.

Born on July 29, 1931 in Santiago de Chile, he trained with the Jesuits and later graduated in Law and studied in the United States, at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, at Princeton University.

Edwards he mixed his literary career with politics and diplomacywhich he joined in the mid-50s and from which he was expelled by the Pinochet dictatorship, which forced him into exile in Barcelona between 1973 and 1978. In his diplomatic career he held different positions: he was a counselor in Lima and Secretary of the Chilean embassy in Paris (when the poet Pablo Neruda was ambassador) and, in 2010, he held the position of Chilean ambassador in the French capital.

In 1970, during the beginning of the socialist government of Salvador Allende, he trusted him to resume relations with Cuba, although he ended up being considered persona non grata by the Cuban government due to his affinity with opponents of Castroism. He was also head of the Eastern European department of the Chilean Foreign Ministry, took part in the Latin American common market project and served in the 1960s for a few months as ambassador to Cuba.

Although He wrote his first book of short stories at the age of 20., diplomacy and politics absorbed him for a long time. In 1974 he published ‘Persona non grata’, about his experiences in Cuba, which was censored in Chile and on the island itself. This work was republished in 2006 with a new epilogue, entitled ‘The double censorship’.

A prolific writer, he was also the author of books such as ‘Gente de la ciudad’ (1961); ‘The weight of the night’ (1964); ‘From the tail of the dragon’, with which he obtained in Spain the world essay award (1977); ‘The stone guests’ (1978), about the Chilean exile; ‘The wax museum’ (1982); or ‘The imaginary woman’ (1989). Other titles of his were ‘Uncomfortable memory’ (1991); ‘Goodbye poet’ (1991), Comillas Award for Biography; and ‘The origin of the world’ (1996).

His latest novels include ‘The dream of history’ (2000), ‘The useless family’ (2005), ‘The house of Dostoyevsky’ (2008), ‘The death of Montaigne’ (2011), or ‘The last sister’ (2016). In July 2015, the writer delivered two letters and three copies of ‘El Patio’, ‘People of the city’ and ‘Persona non grata’ in the legacy that he deposited in the Caja de las Letras of the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid. Three years ago he published the novel ‘Oh, malignant’, starring a young Pablo Neruda.

Edwards received the National Prize for Literature of Chile (1994) or the prestigious Cervantes Prize (1999) in Spain. In addition, he obtained the Silver Pen at the Bilbao Book Fair (2008) for his career, the Planeta-Casamérica Ibero-American Narrative Prize for ‘La casa de Dostoievsky’, the International Prize from the Cristóbal Gabarrón de las Letras Foundation in Valladolid ( 2009), or the González Ruano Prize for Journalism (2011), and in 2016 he was recognized with the Grand Cross of the Order of Alfonso X the wise.