Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual Language Edition (Paperback)

Neruda, whose mother died soon after his birth, was originally named Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He finished his schooling in 1920, at which time he began using the name Pablo Neruda (Jan Neruda was a 19th-century Czech poet whom he greatly admired) and changed his name legally in 1946. Neruda's first book, "Crepusculario", was published in 1923. Deeply committed to social reform, he began working for the government in Chile in 1927, when he was appointed to the Chilean consulate, first in Burma, then Ceylon, Java, and Singapore. He was the Chilean consul in Buenos Aires in 1933-34, then served in Spain during the Spanish Civil War--an experience he wrote about in "Spain in the Heart" (1937). Neruda was an enthusiastic traveler, and spent much of his life on the road. His last political appointment was ambassador to France in 1971-72, and he died in Santiago in 1973. Because of his reputation as the "poet of enslaved humanity," Neruda was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1953 and, in 1971, the Nobel Prize in literature. He died a few days after the overthrow of the Socialist government of Salvador Allende.