José Donoso Yáñez(1924-1996), a Chilean novelist and short-story writer, was one of the central figures in the Boom, the transformation of Latin American literature that began in the 1960s. His fiction depicted a society undone by moral decadence. His novels include Coronation (1955), The Obscene Bird of Night (1970), and A House in the Country (1978), an allegory of Chile under Pinochet's dictatorship.

Suzanne Jill Levine is an award-winning translator and the author of numerous studies in Latin American literature. She has translated works by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Manuel Puig. She is a professor in the Spanish Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.