Julio Ramón Ribeyro's 93rd Birthday

Today’s Doodle celebrates the 93rd birthday of Peruvian author Julio Ramón Ribeyro. Considered one of the greatest Latin American short-story writers of all time, he provided powerful social criticism through the lens of fantasy. 

Ribeyro was born on this day in 1929 in Lima, Peru. He and his three siblings had a middle-class childhood until their father’s untimely death left the family in poverty. 

Ribeyro went on to study arts and law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru before publishing his first short story, The Grey Life, in Correo Bolivariano magazine in 1948. A few years later, the Institute of Hispanic Culture awarded him a journalism fellowship in Spain. 

Ribeyro published his most famous short story The Featherless Buzzards (Los gallinazos sin plumas) in 1955, which critics praised for capturing the harsh reality of life in Peruvian slums. After that, he briefly studied French literature at Sorbonne University before dropping out to work as a hotel doorman and factory worker to sustain his writing. 

In 1958, Ribeyro returned to Peru to become a professor at the National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga. Two years later, he finished his first novel Chronicle of San Gabriel. The book, which explores life in an isolated rural Peruvian community, immediately won a national prize. 

After the publication of his book, Ribeyro returned to Paris, where he worked as a journalist, translator and an editor at Agence France Presse over the next 10 years. 

In 1970, Ribeyro became a Peruvian cultural advisor and later an ambassador to UNESCO. Despite his busy schedule as a diplomat, Ribeyro continued writing. By the end of his career, he had published eight volumes of short stories and several novels, essays and plays. His work has been translated into multiple languages. In 1994, he won the prestigious Juan Rulfo Prize for Literature. 

Happy 93rd birthday, Julio Ramón Ribeyro! Your powerful writing continues to change people’s perceptions of the world.