Santiago. The Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta, author of the famous novel ‘Neruda’s Postman’, made into a film, died on Tuesday at the age of 83 after suffering from Alzheimer’s, his son confirmed to AFP.
“Indeed, my father passed away this morning. It was a long process that began years ago with Alzheimer’s and ended in a natural death,” said his son Fabián Skármeta.
“As a family we are calm. My mother (Nora María Preperski) and I were with him the entire time, accompanying him,” he explained.
The writer became known worldwide with his book ‘Ardiente Paciencia’, which tells the story of a postman’s relationship with Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda.
The work was made into a film as ‘Il Postino‘ or ‘Neruda’s Postman’, and received four Oscar nominations.
Skármeta also obtained recognition with the Casa de las Américas Prize, the UNESCO Prize in 2003 and the Planeta Prize on two occasions.
In 2014 he received the Chilean national literature award.
“Thank you teacher for the life lived. For the stories, the novels and the theater. For the political commitment,” wrote the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, in his account on X.
The president also thanked him for the cultural television program “The Book Show,” “which expanded the frontiers of literature” in the 1990s. Thank you “for dreaming that the snow burned in Chile that hurt you so much,” Boric highlighted.
Born on November 7, 1940 in Antofagasta, in northern Chile, Skármeta belongs to the so-called generation of the 60s.
He studied Philosophy at the University of Chile where years later he worked as a theater director and as a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Education.
After the coup d’état of 1973 he went into exile first to Argentina and then to Germany.
His works include ‘The Enthusiasm’, ‘Naked Under the Roof’ and ‘The Victory Dance’.
But the fictional story of the postman’s friendship with the poet Neruda on Isla Negra, initially published in 1985, took its own flight.
It was adapted to theater and film in several versions, and in view of the success of the film ‘Il Postino’ by Michael Radford, which set the story in Italy, he renamed the novel ‘Neruda’s Postman’.
Skármeta will be held at the headquarters of the Chilean National Theater, next to the presidential palace of La Moneda, in the center of Santiago.
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