Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937) was a Uruguayan writer. His short stories are ranked among the best to emerge from Latin America.

Horacio Quiroga was born on December 31, 1878, in Salto, Uruguay, and died on February 19, 1937, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Though born and raised in Uruguay, he spent most of his years in neighboring Argentina. His life was crammed with adventure and filled with recurrent tragedy and violence. When he was only a babe in arms his father was accidentally killed when a shotgun went off on a family outing. Later his step-father shot himself, and in 1902 Quiroga accidentally shot and killed one of his best friends and literary companions. In 1915 his first wife, unable to endure the hardships of life in the jungle of northern Argentina where Quiroga insisted on living, committed suicide by taking a fatal dose of poison, leaving the widower with two small children to raise. Quiroga...