Reprint. Originally published: 2004.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 451-466) and index.

"This is the first authoritative biography of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate. Born in to a poor family in southern Chile in 1904, Neruda achieved early fame with his book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, and quickly gained prominence as a political figure as well. While he was Chilean consul in Spain, he became an active supporter of the Republican cause; within ten years, his outspoken criticism of Gonzalez Videla's regime in Chile put him at risk in his own country. He lived underground for a year before finally fleeing Chile in a dramatic escape into exile."

"As his poems made him a household name throughout the Spanish-speaking world and won him international acclaim, including the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, Neruda married three times and endured the early death of a daughter, finally finding domestic idyll at Isla Negra with his third wife. He also forged close friendships with some of the greatest writers and artists of his time, including Lorca and Picasso. And he maintained a controversial loyalty to Stalin even after the horrors of the gulag were revealed."

"Adam Feinstein draws on revealing interviews with those who knew Neruda best, including his closest friends and surviving relatives, as well as newly discovered documents in South America, the United States, and the former Soviet Union. Published on the occasion of Neruda's centenary year, this biography provides the first full portrait of a man whose dramatic times, dynamic poetry, commitment to social justice, and joie de vivre made him an icon of the twentieth century."