Ignacio Solares Explained

Ignacio Solares
Birth Date:15 January 1945
Birth Place:Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua
Death Place:Mexico City
Nationality:Mexican
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Ignacio Solares Bernal (15 January 1945 – 24 August 2023) was a Mexican novelist, editor and playwright, whose novel La invasión (The Invasion, 2004) was a bestseller in Mexico and Spain. Until 2005 he served as the Coordinator of Cultural Activities for Literature and Arts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM); he was a faculty member there and directed the cultural magazine Revista de la Universidad de México. He formerly served as director of the Department of Theater and Dance and the Division of Literature at UNAM. He also edited the cultural supplement to the weekly magazine Siempre!.

Solares is known for mystical occurrences and "dislocations of reality" in his fiction.[1] In Anónimo (Anonymous Note, 1979), a work that has been compared to Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" for its protagonist’s metamorphosis into another person, we see Solares’ rejection of much organized religion (especially the Roman Catholic Church), but his simultaneous search for the transcendent and religious on the borders of human experience. He has written, "I believe in every possible manifestation of spiritual strangeness. I believe in all possible escapes. The only thing I cannot endure is reality, whatever it may be. I believe that the writer is defined by the constant necessity of creating a world, to depart from this world. Literature is more concerned with misery than with happiness. Writing is directly related to frustration. It is a reflection of personal desperation. The writer is profoundly disgusted with his reality."[2]

Life and career

Ignacio Solares was born on 15 January 1945[3] [4] in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, but much of his fiction is set in Mexico City. Casas de encantamiento (Houses of Enchantment, 1987), which won the Novedades prize in 1988, tries to capture Mexico City through time. He has written a number of historical novels over the years, beginning with Madero, el otro (Madero's Judgment, 1989), and including La invasión. The latter, though it vividly describes the grim reality of the United States' invasion of Mexico and occupation of Mexico City in 1847, during the Mexican–American War, focuses on the protagonist's personal relationships during and many years after the invasion.[5] Columbus (1996), on the other hand, deals with Pancho Villa's invasion of the United States. Nen, la inútil (Nen the Useless, 1994) is concerned with the advent of the Conquistadores into Precolumbian America; Nen is an Aztec girl who is raped by a Spanish soldier.

The essays in Cartas a una joven psicóloga (Letters to a Young Psychologist, 2000) and the play La moneda de oro ¿Freud o Jung? (The Golden Coin, Freud or Jung? 2004) reflect Solares' interest in psychotherapy.

Solares' Delirium tremens (1979, published in English in 2000 as Delirium Tremens: Stories of Suffering and Transcendence) is a work of non-fiction that collects stories of nightmarish visions experienced by alcoholics when undergoing delirium tremens. It is both a penetrating study of addiction, and a harrowing study of descents into personal hells. Solares' father had experienced delirium tremens when Solares was a boy.

Eladio Cortés, in his Dictionary of Mexican Literature, has written that "Solares' novels have the simplicity of a fairy tale and the complexity of a metaphysical treatise. The author's ability to capture and hold the reader's interest is one of his main assets. He is one of contemporary Mexico’s best novelists."[6]

Ignacio Solares died in Mexico City on 24 August 2023, at the age of 78.[7] [8]

Bibliography

The following are novels, unless otherwise specified.

Other publications and collaborations

Books Translated into English

External links

Notes and References

  1. See Mario Saavedra, “Ignacio Solares, un devoto de la espiritualidad.” Babab 23 (January 2004). John S. Brushwood, "La realidad de la fantasía. Las novelas de Ignacio Solares," La Semana de Bellas Artes 143 (27 August 1980).
  2. As quoted in Carlos Rojas, "La materia de los sueños, " a short biography of Solares.
  3. Web site: Reports of the President and of the Treasurer . 13 February 1997 .
  4. News: Murió a los 78 años el escritor Ignacio Solares . 25 August 2023 . La Jornada . 25 August 2023.
  5. Javier Rodríguez Marcos. "Entrevista: Ignacio Solares. El Novelista Llena Los Huecos Que Deja La Historia." ("The Novelist Fills the Bones that History Leaves.") At the website Río Abierto.
  6. "Solares, Ignacio," in Eladio Cortés, Dictionary of Mexican Literature, Greenwood Press, 1992.
  7. News: Muere el escritor Ignacio Solares a los 78 años de edad . 25 August 2023 . El Universal . 24 August 2023.
  8. News: Murió el escritor mexicano Ignacio Solares a los 78 años . 25 August 2023 . Letralia . 25 August 2023.

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