Jorge Edwards


Jorge Edwards Valdés is a Chilean novelist, journalist and diplomat. He was the Chilean ambassador to France during the first Piñera presidency.

Life and career

Jorge Edwards is a Chilean novelist and journalist. Edwards attended Law School at the Universidad de Chile.
During the presidency of Salvador Allende, Edwards reopened the Chilean embassy in Havana, Cuba, but only three months later, the government of Fidel Castro declared him persona non grata. From this episode he wrote, perhaps, his most famous work, Persona non grata.
In June 1994, Edwards accepted the post of Ambassador for Chile before the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which has its headquarters in Paris, a city where Edwards resided for many years. Edwards currently lives in Santiago de Chile.
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 2010 Edwards was granted Spanish citizenship by King Juan Carlos I of Spain.

Awards and honors

Jorge Edwards writes for several newspapers in Chile and Latin America and Europe. A large portion of his journalistic work has been collected in two books:
He has also written essays and biographies:
Jorge Edwards taught a course at the University of Chicago during the autumn quarter of 2008. The course was entitled My personal history of the boom.