Ignacio Solares. Bibliografia

Ignacio Solares (1945- ) is a prominent Mexican novelist, editor and playwright, whose novel La invasion (The Invasion, 2004) was a bestseller in Mexico and Spain. Until 2005 he served as theCoordinator of Cultural Activities for Literature and Arts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM); he is once again a faculty member there and directs the cultural magazine Revista de laUniversidad de México. He formerly served as director of the Department of Theater and Dance and the Division of Literature at UNAM. He also edits the cultural supplement to the weekly magazine Siempre.Solares is known for mystical occurrences and “dislocations of reality” in his fiction.[1] In Anonimo (Anonymous Note, 1979), a work that has been compared to Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” for itsprotagonist’s metamorphosis into another person, we see Solares’ rejection of much organized religion (especially the Roman Catholic Church), but his simultaneous search for the transcendent and religiouson the borders of human experience. He has written, “I believe in every possible manifestation of spiritual strangeness. I believe in all possible escapes. The only thing I cannot endure is reality,whatever it may be. I believe that the writer is defined by the constant necessity of creating a world, to depart from this world. Literature is more concerned with misery than with happiness. Writingis directly related to frustration. It is a reflection of personal desperation. The writer is profoundly disgusted with his reality.”[2]
Solares was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, but much of hisfiction is set in Mexico City. Casas de encantamiento (Houses of Enchantment, 1987), which won the Novedades prize in 1988, tries to capture Mexico City through time. He has written a number ofhistorical novels over the years, beginning with Madero, el otro (Madero’s Judgment, 1989), and including La invasion. The latter, though it vividly describes the grim reality of the United States’...