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Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937) was a
Uruguay|Uruguayan short story writer. He wrote
stories which, in their use of the supernatural
and the bizarre, look backward to Edgar Allan Poe
and H.P. Lovecraft, but also look forward to the
magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez.

==Biography==

He had a famously miserable and unhappy life. His
father, who was an Argentinian consular official,
was killed accidentally in a shooting incident
when Horacio was an infant. After his stepfather's
death—he shot himself—Quiroga visited
Paris, but soon realized that the
Bohemianism|bohemian life was not for him. He
returned to South America, where he accidentally
shot and killed his friend in 1902 while they were
inspecting a gun. In 1904 he settled in Chaco
province. He planted cotton, but the venture
failed and he abandoned the project. He then
taught for a while and married one of his pupils.
They had one daughter, named Egle, and one son.
Both of these children later killed themselves.
With his family Quiroga moved to San Ignacio,
Misiones Province|Misiones, on the Paraná River,
where he assumed a post of registrar. Unable to
tolerate the harsh conditions, Quiroga's wife
committed suicide by poisoning herself—she
suffered a full week before she died.

His most famous collections are Cuentos de amor,
de locura, y de muerte (1917) and Los desterrados
(1926). These deal with anthropomorphic,
intelligent animals, fate, a jungle that seems to
be alive and bizarre coincidences: all against a
backdrop of total despair. Quiroga is one now seen
as one of the greatest of Uruguayan writers.

==Selected works translated into English==

Horacio Quiroga 'The Decapitated Chicken and Other
Stories' (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004).
(ISBN 0299198340)