Nicanor Parra, rey y mendigo
Rafael Gumucio

NON-FICTION | 2018/2020 | 492 pages

Rafael Gumucio was 32 years old when he visited Nicanor Parra, who was 87 and lived in his mythical house in Las Cruces that he would travel to like someone searching for an oracle, for the first time with a select group of Chilean writers, almost all very young. It was the year 2002, and Gumucio went with excitement, believing Parra had taken an interest in his books. But the poet only wanted to talk about one of the many columns the author of Memorias prematuras had written in a newspaper: “I knew in that instant that he didn’t care about my books or my prose, which is what I naively thought had brought me here. He liked one column out of the thousands I had written, and that was it. More than enough.”

Gumucio continued to visit Parra assiduously, but that first encounter sealed the relationship between them: Parra would project his overwhelming shadow, heavy with intelligence and talent: “He lives in hell, I think, or in purgatory, this man who makes jokes all the time, walks as though he’s dancing, and who hates existential pathos or any sort of severity.” Departing from a monumental work of documentation, appealing to his personal memories and those of his relationship with Parra, Gumucio has written a book whose title condenses the unfathomable complexity of one of the greatest Spanish- language poets, a moving biography that sheds light on every moment in the life of an inimitable man.

RIGHTS: spanish (chile) EDICIONES UDP | spanish (world ex. Chile) PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

BY RAFAEL GUMUCIO:

Los parientes pobres
NOVEL, 2024
Hotel Montana y otros cuentos
STORIES, 2021
Nicanor Parra, rey y mendigo
NON FICTION, 2018/2020
¿Por qué soy católico?
NON FICTION, 2019
La Edad Media
NOVEL, 2017
El galán imperfecto
NOVEL, 2017
Contra la inocencia
ESSAY, 2016
Milagro en Haití
ESSAY, 2015
Mi abuela, Marta Rivas González
NOVEL, 2013
Contra la belleza
ESSAY, 2010
La situación. Crónicas literarias
ESSAY, 2010
La deuda
NOVEL, 2009
Páginas coloniales
ESSAY, 2005
Los platos rotos
ESSAY, 2013
Monstruos cardinales
ESSAY, 2002
Comedia nupcial
NOVEL, 2002
Memorias prematuras
NOVEL, 1999
Invierno en la torre
STORIES, 1996