Chilean writer Antonio Skarmeta, whose most famous novel “Une ardente patience” was adapted for the cinema in 1994 with “The Postman”, where Philippe Noiret plays Pablo Neruda, died Tuesday at the age of 83, announced his family to the AFP.
“My father actually passed away this morning. It was a long process that started years ago with Alzheimer’s disease and ended with a natural death,” Fabian Skarmeta said.
His work of a dozen novels, and numerous tales, stories, poems, works for young people and plays, has been awarded numerous prizes in the Spanish language.
In 2014 he received the National Literature Prize of Chile, the highest national award.
“Thank you, maestro, for the life you lived. For the stories, the novels and the theater. For the political commitment,” wrote the President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, on his X account.
He also thanked him for the television cultural program “El show de los libros” (The Show of Books) that Mr. Skarmeta hosted on Chilean television in the 1990s and “which expanded the boundaries of literature.”
His novel “An ardent patience”, published in 1987, tells of the friendly relationship of a young postman with Pablo Neruda, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971. The film adaptation by Michael Radford received the Oscar for best music in 1997.
Born on November 7, 1940 in Antofagasta, northern Chile, Antonio Skarmeta studied philosophy at the University of Chile, where he worked years later as a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and a theater director.
After Augusto Pinochet’s military coup in 1973, he went into exile first in Argentina, then in Germany, where he served as Chile’s ambassador in the 2000s.
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