Hernán Neira

He attended in Chile to Colegio San Ignacio in Santiago de Chile. His family moved to Spain in 1971, where he attended to Colegio San Patricio and Instituto Cardenal Cisneros. In January 1984 he received his undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the Catholic University in Santiago de Chile, where he also directed Perspectivas, a student magazine opposed to the dictatorship of general Pinochet. In 1985 he moved to Paris, where he studied Philosophy at the Paris VIII University. He also studied sociology and linguistics at the l'École de hautes etudes en sciences sociales, Paris. In 1992 returned to Chile.

His first post was in Universidad de La Serena (1984-1985), Chile. In Paris he taught at the Institut d'études politiques, Paris (1991-1992), and again in Chile in Universidad Austral (1993-2007). He has invited to teach at the University of Chile, Diego Portales, Los Lagos, La Frontera and Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello. Hernán Neira has also given several conferences in Europe. Since 2008 he is professor of political philosophy at Universidad de Santiago de Chile. In 2011 he was elected to the Academic Counsel of this university.

He has become one of the outstanding Chilean literary voices, gradually becoming a cult writer. In 2005, Mathieu Lindon wrote about him in the French paper Libération: “There is, dans Les naufragés (French translation of El naufragio de la luz), not properly an atmosphere and tone, but a strategy of rising malaise, which reminds both Julian Grack and Marie NDiaye”,[1] and the Swiss paper “La Tribune  de Genève” compared him with Joseph Conrad.[2] In 2004 Hernán Neira, interviewed by the Chilean paper El Mostrador, considered himself as “outsider[3]”. His first short-stories book, A golpes de hacha y fuego (By blows of axe and fire, Editorial Andrés Bello Santiago, 1995) was unanimously welcome.[4]

As a philosopher, his main research areas are political philosophy, animal ethics and literary aesthetics.

He has published scientific articles in Chile, the United States, Spain, the Netherlands and Cuba, and has received six times the support of the National Found for Science and Technology (Fondecyt). He is currently leading a research on political aspects of philosophical and political suicide.

He published two novels, El sueño inconcluso (The unended dream) (Editorial Planeta, Santiago, 1999) and El naufragio de la luz (The shipwreck of the light) (Ediciones B, Barcelona, 2004). He has also published compilations of essays in El espejo del olvido[5] (The mirror of forgetfulness) (Dolmen Ediciones, Santiago, 1997), and La ciudad y las palabras (The city and words) (Editorial Universitaria, Santiago, 2004). In addition, he has collaborated with the newspapers El Mercurio (Chile) and El País (Spain),[6] and with the magazines Ecos de España y Latinoamérica (Germany), and The International Literary Quarterly, New York.

In 2003, the novel El naufragio de la luz (The shipwreck of the light) won unanimously the Dos Orillas award,[7] given by four European publishing houses, that have translated his novel into French, Portuguese and Greek.[8]

His narrative Almuerzos de verano (Summer Lunches) received the award of the Fondo Nacional del Libro y de la Lectura (2018) and has been recently published by the International Literary Quarterly.