Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig grew up in a small town on the pampas of Argentina, where his mother took him to the cinema almost every day. The Hollywood melodramas of the 1940s, with their glamorous female stars, became his refuge from the macho world of the provinces.

He studied film in Rome and worked as an assistant director, but turned to writing. His first novel, “Betrayed by Rita Hayworth” (1968), told of a boy like himself in a provincial town, entirely through dialogues, letters and diaries. “Heartbreak Tango” (1969) made him famous.

His best-known novel, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (1976), is set in an Argentine prison cell, where Molina, a gay window dresser, and Valentín, a left-wing revolutionary, slowly come closer while Molina retells old films. The novel was banned in Argentina under the dictatorship. Puig had already left the country in 1973 after receiving threats. The film adaptation (1985) won an Academy Award for William Hurt, and the novel was later turned into a Broadway musical.

Puig lived in exile in Mexico, New York and Brazil. He died in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1990, aged 57.