Uruguayan short story writer who has been compared to Edgar Allan Poe. Quiroga wrote over 200 short stories. Among his famous tales is the haunting 'The Feather Pillow,' in which the life of a young bride, Alicia, fades away in a large silent house. After Alicia's death, a servant finds from her pillow a grotesque animal with hairy legs, a parasitic creature, swollen from blood it had sucked from her.

"These parasites of feathered creatures, diminutive in their habitual environment, reach enormous proportions under certain conditions. Human blood seems particularly favourable to them, and it is not rare to encounter them in feather pillows." (from 'The Feather Pillow')

Horacio Quiroga was born at Salto on the River Uruguay. His father, who was an Argentinian consular official, was killed accidentally in a shooting incident when Horacio was an infant. The family moved to Córdoba and returned to Salto in 1883. In 1891 the family moved to the capital, Montevideo where Quiroga studied for a short time at the university. He started to publish in local magazines from 1897 and was the founding editor of Revista de Salto (1899-90). After his stepfather's death - he shot himself - Quiroga visited Paris, but soon realized that the 'bohemian' life was not for him. In Paris he fell under the influence of the French symbolist movement and the works of Poe, although he also read extensively Chekhov and de Maupassant. Quiroga's diary from this period was published in 1950. After returning to Uruguay, Quiroga published a volume of Modernist poetry, Los arrecifes de coral (1902), and became the centre of a group of young writers.

Quiroga accidentally shot and killed his friend in 1902 while they were inspecting a gun. He left for Buenos Aires where he taught Spanish at the British School. He was the official photographer on an expedition, led by the poet Leopoldo Lugones, to Misiones in northeast Argentina. The target was the Jesuit ruins - the Jesuits had been expelled in 1767. Quiroga became enchanted by the wild region and he spent the larger part of his life in remote jungle regions. In 1904 he settled in Chano province. He planted cotton but the venture failed and he abandoned the project. Experiences from this period - accidents, extreme hardships, and realization that man cannot control nature - became material for a number of his writings. Nature was for Quiroga a hostile element. A simple walk through a cane-brake could be exhausting: "The clumps, arched in a dome chest-high, were tangled in solid blocks. The task of crossing, difficult even on a cool day, was very hard at this hour. Mr Jones crossed it, nevertheless, swimming between the crackling dusty cane over the clay left by the floods, gasping with fatigue and the bitter vapour of nitrates." (from 'La insolación')

From 1906 to 1911 Quiroga taught at the Escuela Normal, Buenos Aires. He married in 1909 Ana María Cires, his pupil; they had one daughter, named Egle, and one son, named Darío after the pseudonymous surname of Félix Sarmiento. Both these children later killed themselves. With his family Quiroga moved to San Ignacio, Misiones, on the river Paraná, where he assumed a post of registrat. Unable to tolerate the harsh conditions, Quiroga's wife committed suicide by poisoning herself - she suffered a full week before she died. Alone with two children, Quiroga wrote a tender collection of children's stories.

In 1916 Quiroga returned to Buenos Aires with his children. He worked at the Uruguyan consulate and in 1925 he returned to Misiones. Two years later he married María Elena Bravo, a friend of his daughter. The marriage ended in separation. In 1935 Quiroga was appointed Uruguay's honorary consul in San Ignacio. Throughout his life, Quiroga was plague by his illnesses. He suffered from mental disorder, and to dispel his bouts of tension and anxiety, he began to drink. Quiroga committed suicide on February 19, 1937, at a Buenos Aires clinic, after he was told he had cancer.

Obsession with death, human weakness, and emphasis on bizarre situations marked Quiroga's tales. Often in his fatalistic stories the protagonist is struck down by a fatal accident or fights against nature, but the will of nature cannot be opposed. When Jack London wrote about the barren ice-covered plains of the far North, Quiroga set his stories in the wilds of the Amazon. His most famous collections are Cuentos de amor, de locura, y de muerte (1917) and Los desterrados (1926). Cuentos de selva (1918) was animal fables for children. Anaconda (1921) was told in the style of Kipling's Jungle Book. It described struggles between anacondas and poisonous snakes in the world of snakes. In the short story 'El hombre muerto' a man falls on a machete knife, he is dying, time stops, and he watches his surroundings with heightened senses. "What had changed? Nothing. And he looked. Isn't this banana plantation his plantation? Doesn't he come here every day to clear the ground? Who knows it as he does? He can see his plantation perfectly; very sparse - and the broad leaves naked from the wind. But now they are not moving. It is the midday calm; soon it will probably be twelve o'clock." In 'A la deriva' the protagonist is bitten by a deadly snake and dies feeling at last better: he don't have to keep up illusions. His own technique as a short story writer Quiroga presented in 'Manual de cuentista perfecto' (1927), stressing the need for economy and intensity. Quiroga also published two novels and a play.

For further reading: Vida y obra de Horacio Quiroga by J.M. Delgado and A.J. Brignole (1939); Horacio Quiroga by M. Seymour-Smith (1952); Horacio Quiroga by Noé Jitrik (1967); Genio y figura de Horacio Quiroga by Emir Rodríguez Monegal (1967); El desterrado by Emir Rodríguez Monegal (1968); An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature by Jean Franco (1969); Aproximaciones a Horacio Quiroga by Ángel Flores (1976); El estilo de Horacio Quiroga en sus cuentos by Nicolás A.S. Bratosevich (1980); Trayectoria de Horacio Quiroga by Enrique Espinosa (1980); Horacio Quiroga by José Luis Martínez Morales (1982); El Quiroga nue yo conocí by Enrique Amorim (1983); Quiroga by Peter R. Beardsell (1986); World Authors 1900-1950, vol. 3, ed. by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); Testimonios Autobiograficos De Horacio Quiroga, ed. by Norma Perez Martin (1997); Contemporary Latin American Literature by Gladys M. Varona-Lacey (2001) - For further information: Horacio Quiroga - Antología Virtual de Literatura latinoamericana

Selected works:

• Los arrecifes de coral, 1902
• El crimen del otro, 1904
• Historia de un amor turbio, 1908
• Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte, 1917
• Cantos de la selva para niños, 1918
• El salvaje, 1920
• Las sacrificadas, 1920
• Anaconda, 1921
• South American Jungle Tales, 1922 (trans. by Arthur Livingston)
• El desierto, 1924
• "La gallina degollada" y otros cuentos, 1925
• Los desterrados, 1926
• Pasado amor, 1929
• Suelo natal, 1931
• El más allá, 1935
• Diario de viaje a París, 1950
• Obras inéditas y desconocidas, 1967-73 (8 vols.)
• The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories, 1976 (trans. by Margaret Sayers Peden)
• Cuentos completas, 1978 (2 vols.)
• Novelas completas, 1979
• The Exiles and Other Stories, 1987 (trans. by David Danielson and Elsa K. Gambarini)
• Testimonios Autobiograficos De Horacio Quiroga. Cartas Y Diari, 1997 (ed. by Norma Perez Martin)
• Cuentos completos 1-2, 1997