People like Mario Benedetti

Mario Orlando Hardy Hamlet Brenno Benedetti Farrugia (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmaɾjo βeneˈðeti] (listen); 14 September 1920 – 17 May 2009), was an Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet and an integral member of the Generación del 45. Despite publishing more than 80 books and being published in twenty languages he was not well known in the English-speaking world. In the Spanish-speaking world he is considered one of Latin America's most important writers of the latter half of the 20th century.

Benedetti was born 1920 in Paso de los Toros in the Uruguayan Tacuarembó Department to Brenno Benedetti, a pharmaceutical and chemical winemaker and Matilde Farrugia who were of Italian descent. Two years later, they moved to Tacuarembó, the capital city of the province, and shortly after that, his father tried to buy a chemist’s but was swindled and went into bankruptcy, so they moved and settled in Montevideo, the capital city of the country, where they lived in difficult economic conditions. Mario completed six years of primary school at the Deutsche Schule Montevideo, where he also learned German, which later allowed him to be the first translator of Franz Kafka in Uruguay. His father immediately removed him from the school when Nazi ideology started featuring in the classroom. For two years afterwards he studied at Liceo Miranda, but for the rest of his high school years he did not attend an educational institution. In those years he learned shorthand, which was his livelihood for a long time. At the age of 14 he began working, first as a stenographer and then as a seller, public officer, accountant, journalist, broadcaster and translator.