Sergio Ramírez
Sergio Ramírez
Competition: Latin America & Caribbean
Sergio Ramírez was born in Masatepe, Nicaragua, in 1942, and published his first novel, Cuentos, in 1963. A 1964 graduate of the National University of Nicaragua, he was elected Secretary General of the Central American Confederation University (San José, Costa Rica) in 1968 and 1976. From 1973 to 1975 he lived in Berlin as a resident artist through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), at which time he wrote the novel Te dio miedo la sangre? In 1977 he headed the Group of Twelve, formed by intellectuals, businessmen, and priests, who were united against the Somoza regime. In 1979, after the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution, he became Vice President. In 1988 he received the International Prize for Human Rights, awarded by the Bruno Kreisky Foundation in Vienna. He is a member of the steering committee of the Julio Cortzar lectures program at the Guadalajara University, Mexico, and of the board of the Iberoamerican Foundation for New Journalism, based in Cartagena, Colombia.
Among his books are El Pensamiento vivo de Sandino (1975), Castigo Divino (1988), which won Spain’s Dashiel Hammett Award; Un baile de mascaras (1995), winner of France’s Laure Battalion Award; Margarita esta linda la mar (1998), winner of the Alfaguera International Novel Award and Cuba’s José Maria Arguedas Latin American Award; Sobras nada mas (stories, 2002); Mil y una mertes (a novel, 2005); El reino animal (essays, 2006); Tambor Olvidado (2007); and El cielo llora por mi (a novel, 2008).