Manuel Mejía Vallejo is a Colombian writer whose work emanates from the traditions of his native region of Antioquia. Antioquia's rich oral tradition is an integral element in his fiction. Paradoxically, despite this traditionalism, his work is not only modern, but in effect his 1964 novel, El día señalado (The Special Day), heralded modern, new fiction in Antioquia. Like many writers from this region, Mejía Vallejo frequently employs nostalgic elements in his fiction and says: "I am in favor of a literature of past memory when the memory is something active, when it's not an excessive nostalgia, but a discovery of something that has gone and consequently continues alive." Antioquia's history and traditions, modernity with respect to narrative technique, and a special kind of nostalgia are constant elements in Mejía Vallejo's work.

Born in Jerico, Antioquia, on 23 April 1923, Mej...