Jorge Volpi

Jorge Volpi, writer (Mexico City, Mexico) studied law and literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and received a PhD in Spanish philology at the University of Salamanca in Spain. After his career as a student, Jorge became a lawyer, and for two years he was a secretary for Diego Valadés, the Mexican general state lawyer. Following his work with Valadés, Volpi helped found the "Crack Movement", a Mexican literary group consisted of Eloy Urroz, Ignacio Padilla, and Pedro Angel Palou, among others, who write beyond magical realism and follow the ideals of the 1968 Latin American literary boom, helping Mexican authors to find and write with their own voices. His work has been influenced by authors such as Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz. Jorge is best known for his novels and essays, and as a former lawyer and a successful scholar, his academic interests are prevalent in his work. His most acclaimed book, En busca de Klingsor (In Search of Klingsor, 1999) is a novel that fuses a story of Nazi generals in World War II and the history of physics. For his work on this novel, Jorge won the Spanish literary prize, Premio Biblioteca Breve, in addition to the French Deux-Océans-Grinzane-Cavour-Prize.