Guest of the ilb 2007
Eduardo Antonio Parra, born in
León in Mexico in 1965, grew up in the northern border town of Nuevo
Laredo. He studied Hispanic Studies at the Universidad Regiomontana in
Monterrey, where he still lives. Before embarking on a career as a
writer he tried out various jobs, including sales promoter for credit
cards, scrap merchant, screenplay writer, journalist, teacher of
literature, and newspaper editor for police coverage. These days, Parra
writes regularly for various newspapers and magazines in Chile and
Mexico.
Parra is one of the seminal writers of the
so-called »literatura norteña«. This »literature of the north« is
defined not only by its landscape, climate and proximity to the USA,
but is further characterized by a singular use of language which
experiments with tone, rhythm and tempo. Parra’s central themes include
violence and the erotic. His clear, expressive and authoritative prose
has a distinctive voice.
Parra was honoured with various regional awards
for his stories. His first book, the collection »El río, el pozo y
otras fronteras« (t: The river, the fountain and other borders), was
published in 1994. This was followed by two further collections of
stories, »Los límites de la noche« (1996; t: The borders of the night)
and »Tierra de nadie« (1999; Eng. »No Man’s Land«, 2004), in which
Parra describes people whose violent tendencies become especially
apparent in borderline situations. The setting for the story is the no
man’s land of the US-Mexican border, which is described as an almost
surreal environment, in which the fantastic mingles with the mundane.
In 2000 Parra won the Premio Juan Rulfo in the
category »short story« for his »Nadie los vio salir« (2001; t: No one
saw them leaving). Once again the setting is the borderlands, defined
by violence, drugs and alcohol. When a couple from elsewhere appear in
a bar on the border, their seductive behaviour releases a suppressed
lust in the locals, which transports them in an erotic, aggressive
trance. Parra’s first novel, »Nostalgia de la sombra« (2002; t: Desire
for the shadow), deals with a contract killer, whose first victim lives
in, of all places, the small town where the protagonist himself once
lived a normal life, and where his wife and children still live.
Parra's most recent publication was the story collection »Parábolas del
silencio« (2006; t: Parables of silence).
Stories by him have been translated into English,
French, Italian, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Finnish, Chinese and
German. The author has received numerous grants, including one from the
Centro de Escritores de Nuevo León, two from the Fondo Nacional para la
Cultura y las Artes de México (FONCA) – for short fiction and novels –
and from the Guggenheim Foundation. He currently holds a scholarship
awarded by Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte.
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