SOURCE: Donoso, José, and Amalia Pereira. “Interview with José Donoso.” Latin American Literary Review 15, no. 30 (July-December 1987): 57-67.

In the following interview, Donoso talks about such topics as his literary education, changes in his literary techniques, other Latin American writers, and his attitudes toward exile and toward the political situation in Chile.

The following interview was conducted at [the home of José Donoso] in Santiago on August 4, 1986.

[Amalia Peroira]: Some of your earliest stories, such as “The Poisoned Pastries” and “The Blue Woman,” were written in English when you were a student at Princeton University. Being a very young man, how were you affected by this immersion in the North American intellectual and cultural world?

[José Donoso]: Well, for me it was really the English world that I became immersed in when I came to study at Princeton. I studied English literature, and I also did read some American...