Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life

The first comprehensive English-language biography of Pablo Neruda, one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century.

Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean writer, was born into a poor family in 1904. His love poems would go on to make him a household name throughout the Spanish-speaking world and win him international acclaim. His remarkable life reads like an adventure story, from his involvement in the Spanish Civil War to his flight as an exile from the security forces of his own country. He was a Communist and a lover of humanity who nevertheless clung to his Stalinist views even after the horrors of the gulag were revealed. He married three times and endured the early death of a daughter; he had countless other love affairs and forged close friendships with some of the greatest writers and artists of his time, notably García Lorca and Picasso.

Adam Feinstein, a journalist and prize-winning translator of Spanish and Latin American poetry, delves into a wealth of published and unpublished accounts of Neruda. Drawing on Neruda's poetic work, on original interviews, and on the extensive writing on Neruda that exists in Spanish, he delivers the first English-language biography to illuminate the personal, political, and artistic life of this beloved writer.