Alfredo Bryce - Rise in Literary Career

Rise in Literary Career

He received a grant from the French government which, like many other Latin American authors of the boom period, led him to Paris. At the Sorbonne he studied classic and modern French literature and then taught at various French schools and universities.

His first book Huerto Cerrado published in 1968, was a finalist for the Casa de las Américas literary prize awarded in Cuba and is a collection of short stories written in different styles and points of view about a young protagonist, Manolo, a member of Lima's upper class, as he comes of age in 1950s Lima. This was followed by his first novel, Un Mundo para Julius, published in 1970 that became a big success and counts today as one of the classics of Latin American literature. The novel, which has since been translated into ten languages, tells the story of a young boy who grows up as the youngest of four children of a rich, Peruvian upper-class family. Although Julius actually belongs to the ruling classes he feels a stronger bond with the servants which surround him and this brings him into conflict with his family. With biting irony the author exposes, through the eyes of a child, the great social differences in Peruvian society.