Chilean writer Jorge Edwards is dead. The author and former diplomat died in Madrid at the age of 91. "Today we bid farewell to a man who was fundamental to Chilean and Latin American literature, to an intellectual who shaped contemporary cultural life with his personality and his thinking," said Chilean Culture Minister Jaime de Aguirre. "He was a creator who knew how to combine literature and politics in a sensitive way, and from this starting point he advanced his outstanding career."

Edwards was awarded the Chilean National Literary Prize in 1994 and the Cervantes Prize, the most important literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, in 1999. His German publications include "Faustino", "Persona non grata" and "Der Ursprung der Welt".

As a diplomat, Edwards represented his country in Brussels, Havana, Lima and Paris, among other places. He was expelled from Cuba because he maintained contacts with opponents of Fidel Castro's communist government. He processed his experiences as a diplomat in Havana in his work "Persona non grata". After the military coup in Chile in 1973, he went into exile in Spain, where he has lived intermittently ever since.

Tweet Ministry of Culture Chile report La Tercera