SOURCE: "José Donoso, 72, Fantastical Chilean Novelist," in The New York Times, December 9, 1996, p. B13.

[The following obituary presents an overview of Donoso's life and career.]

José Donoso, one of Chile's best-known authors, whose novels and short stories used dark surrealism and social satire to explore the haunted lives of exiles and writers and a world of aristocratic excesses, died on Saturday in Santiago. He was 72 years old.

Mr. Donoso died of cancer at his home, his niece Claudia Donoso told The Associated Press.

One of the major figures of the Latin American literary boom of the 1960's and 1970's. Mr. Donoso crafted multilayered visions of social disintegration and human fallibility that were sometimes compared with those of Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Mexico's Carlos Fuentes and Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa.

After a youthful wanderlust that took him across South America, the United States and Europe, Mr. Donoso began...