Gustavo Sainz

Gustavo Sainz (born July 13, 1940 in Mexico City) is an award-winning Spanish language author from Mexico. The son of journalist José Luis Sainz, Gustavo Sainz learned how to read at the age of three from his paternal grandmother, and he started publishing his work in the city newspapers at the age of ten. When he was in primary school, Sainz founded several school magazines for his classmates' amusement, which he continued to do until college. At the age of eighteen, Sainz left home to work as a journalist in the magazine "Visión". In 1960, he entered the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where he began studying law, but ultimately changed his career to study literature. Sainz's first novel, "Gazapo", was published when he was twenty-five and has been translated into fourteen languages. This novel marked the beginning of the literary movement "la Onda", of which other Mexican writers, such as José Agustín and Parmenides García Saldaña, formed part.

In 1968, Sainz travelled to the University of Iowa to participate in the International Writing Program, where he started and completed his second novel, "Obsesivos días circulares". Sainz's longest novel, "A la salud de la serpiente", relates his adventures of this period in Iowa.

Upon his return to Mexico, he wrote "La princesa del Palacio de Hierro", which won the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia in 1974. In 2003, he published "A troche y moche", which one the prize for the best novel of the year written in Mexico, and its translation intro French won the award for best novel in Quebec. His work includes eighteen published novels, countless articles, and various children's books. He is currently the editor of the magazine "TransgresionES". He lives in the United States with his two sons, Claudio and Marcio Sainz, and is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

= Works =