Bryce Echenique, Alfredo (1939–)

Alfredo Bryce Echenique (b. 19 February 1939), Peruvian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. Bryce Echenique was born in Lima to an aristocratic family. He studied literature and law at the University of San Marcos in Lima, receiving a Ph.D. in 1964. He then studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. Beginning in 1968 he taught at the universities of Nanterre, Sorbonne, and Vincennes. In 1980 he relocated to Montpellier and taught literature at Paul Valéry University. In 1986 he moved to Spain.

An original combination of the oral tradition, memory, and humor is the basic feature of Bryce Echenique's entire body of literary work. Un mundo para Julius (1970; A World for Julius, 1992) was his first novel and one of his most successful ones. It depicts a sector of the Lima oligarchy with authenticity, humor, and irony. In 1998, he was awarded the prestigious Premio Nacional de Narrativa prize in Spain.

In his novels Tantas veces Pedro (1977), La vida exagerada de Martín Romaña (1981), El hombre que hablaba de Octavia de Cádiz (1985), and La última mudanza de Felipe Carrillo (1988), Bryce Echenique narrates the cycle of apprenticeship and maturity in the erotic experience of one Latin American character, of oligarchic origin, in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. He has also published several short-story collections: Huerto cerrado (1968), La felicidad ja, ja (1974), Cuentos completos (1981), and Crónicas personales (1988). His journalistic work is equally extensive in magazines and newspapers.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bryce Echenique, Alfredo. Antología personal. San Juan, PR: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1995.

Bryce Echenique, Alfredo. Permiso para vivir: Antimemorias. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1993.

Kohut, Karl, and José Morales Saravia. Literatura peruana hoy: Crisis y creación. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 1988.

Schwartz, Marcy E. Writing Paris: Urban Topographies of Desire in Contemporary Latin American Fiction. Albany: SUNY Press, 1999.

                                   JesÚs DÍaz Caballero