Jorge Edwards

Edwards at the Moscow Cervantes Institute. October 11, 2012

Jorge Edwards Valdés (Santiago, 29 June 1931-Madrid, 17 March 2023) was a Chilean novelist, journalist and diplomat.

He was the Chilean ambassador to France during the first Sebastián Piñera presidency (2010-2014). In 2008 his novel La Casa de Dostoievsky won the prestigious Premio Iberoamericano Planeta-Casa de América de Narrativa, one of the richest literary prizes in the world, worth $200,000. In 1999, he was honored with the Miguel de Cervantes Prize.

During the presidency of Salvador Allende, Edwards reopened the Chilean embassy in Havana, Cuba, but only three months later, he was forced to leave the island. From this episode he wrote what is perhaps his most famous work, Persona non grata (1973), a memoir of his experiences as the Chilean ambassador to Cuba. Critical of the revolutionary socialist regime of Cuba's Fidel Castro, the book created controversy among Latin American writers.