Google Doodle celebrates Peruvian writer’s 93rd birthday; Here are some interesting facts about Julio Ramón Ribeyro

Google Doodle celebrates the 93rd birthday of Peruvian writer Julio Ramón Ribeyro, considered one of the best short-story writers of all time in Latin American literature, on August 31, 2022. Here are some interesting and fun facts about Julio Ramón Ribeyro.

Here is a look at the life and work of Julio Ramón Ribeyro.

Who was Julio Ramón Ribeyro?

Personal

• Birth name: Julio Ramon Ribeyro Zuniga
• Birth date: August 31, 1929
• Birthplace: Lima, Peru
• Died on: December 4, 1994 (age 65)
• Death place: Lima, Peru
• Nationality: Peruvian
• Spouse: Alida Lamb
• Son: Julio Ramon Ribeyro Cordero
• Education:
  • Pontifical Catholic University of Peru
  • National University of San Marcos
• Famous as: Writer, journalist, and translator
• Notable works:
  • The buzzards without feathers
  • The word of the mute

25 Interesting Facts about Julio Ramón Ribeyro

1. Julio Ramón Ribeyro Zúñiga was born in Lima on August 31, 1929. He was a short-story writer, novelist, and playwright, one of the Latin American masters of the short story, whose works show an intriguing mix of social analysis and fantasy, projecting a bleak view of Peruvian life.
2. He was likewise successful in different genres: novel, essay, theater, diary, and aphorism. In the extended period of his death, he was awarded the US$100,000 Premio Juan Rulfo de literatura latinoamericana y del Caribe. His work has been translated into various languages, including English.
3. Julio Ramón Ribeyro was the author of some eight volumes of short stories, the most popular of which is Los gallinazos sin plumas (1955; “Featherless Buzzards”). The title story of that collection, which is among the stories translated in Marginal Voices (1993), is generally popular and generally anthologized.
4. Ribeyro started publishing fiction in the mid-1950s, right at the time that he moved to France, where he lived for the vast majority of the rest of his life, with brief returns to Peru.
5. The decay of the Peruvian nobility is the theme of two of his first novels, Crónica de San Gabriel (1960; “Saint Gabriel Chronicle”) and Los geniecillos dominicales (1965; “Sunday Geniuses”).
6. Julio Ramón Ribeyro favored metropolitan settings, especially Lima, overflowing with the poor who had moved down to the coast from the Andes.
7. He chronicled their lives to give them a voice, which is reflected in the title of his four-volume collection called Palabra del mudo (volumes one and two, 1973; three, 1977; and four, 1992; Words of the Mute).
8. Despite the pathetic lives of the characters he portrays, Julio Ramón Ribeyro’s storytellers keep a critical distance, as though depicting things. The actual characters seem not to understand, significantly less have the option to articulate, their predicament.
9. The characters in his stories, frequently autobiographical and normally written in the basic yet ironic language, will quite often wind up with their hopes cruelly dashed. Yet, regardless of its apparent pessimism, Ribeyro’s work is much of the time comic, its humor springing from both the author’s sense of irony and the accidents that befall his protagonists. A collection was published under the title La palabra del mudo (The Word of the Mute).

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10. Julio Ramón Ribeyro studied literature and law at Universidad Católica in Lima. In 1960 he moved to Paris where he worked as a journalist in France Presse and afterward as a cultural advisor and ambassador to UNESCO. He was an eager smoker, as depicted in his short story ¨Sólo para fumadores¨ (For smokers only), and he died because of his addiction.
11. In his childhood Julio Ramón Ribeyro lived in Santa Beatriz, a middle-class Lima neighborhood, and afterward moved to Miraflores, residing in the neighborhood of Santa Cruz, near Huaca Pucllana. He went to school in the Champagnat School of Miraflores. He was deeply impacted by the death of his father which likewise caused a dire economic situation for his family.
12. Afterward, Julio Ramón Ribeyro studied Arts and Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, somewhere the range of 1946 and 1952, where he met Pablo Macera, Alberto Escobar, and Luis Felipe Angell “Sofocleto” among other youth with intellectual and artistic interests.
13. He started his writing career with the short story The Gray Life which was published in the magazine Correo Bolivariano in 1948. In 1952 he won a journalism fellowship awarded by the Institute of Hispanic Culture, which permitted him to make a trip to Spain.
14. Julio Ramón Ribeyro traveled by ship to Barcelona and from there went to Madrid, where he spent a year and learned at the Complutense University in that city. He additionally wrote some short stories and articles.
15. Toward the finish of his partnership in 1953, he traveled to Paris to set up a thesis on French literature at Sorbonne University. By then he had written his first book Los gallinazos sin plumas (The featherless buzzards), a collection of short stories on urban issues, viewed as one of his best pieces of narrative writing.
16. There, he decided to drop out and stayed in Europe doing odd jobs, substituting his visit to France with brief periods in Germany and Belgium. It was in Munich somewhere in the range of 1954 and 1956, where he composed his first novel, Chronicle of San Gabriel.
17. Julio Ramón Ribeyro came back to Paris and afterward traveled to Antwerp in 1957, where he worked in a factory of photography products. In 1958, he got back to Germany and spent some time in Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt.
18. During his European stay, Julio Ramón Ribeyro needed to take on many trades to survive, including those of newspapers recycling, concierge, loader on the subway, and seller of printing materials, among others.
19. Julio Ramón Ribeyro got back to Lima in 1958. He was appointed as a professor at the National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, and impelled the making of the Institute for Popular Culture, in 1959. In 1960 he published his novel Chronicle of San Gabriel, which procured him the National Prize for Novel that year.
20. In 1961, Julio Ramón Ribeyro got back to Paris, where he worked as a columnist for ten years, at Agence France Press.
21. Julio Ramón Ribeyro was likewise a cultural attache at the Peruvian Embassy in Paris and was additionally a cultural consultant and ambassador of Peru to UNESCO.
22. He married Alida Cordero and they had one child. In 1973, he worked his first lung cancer, caused by their addiction to cigarettes because of which he got a long treatment. Inspired by this experience, he composed a book named “Only for smokers”.
23. In 1983, Julio Ramón Ribeyro got the National Book Award, and after a decade, the National Culture.
24. Julio Ramón Ribeyro’s last years were spent traveling between Europe and Peru. In the last year of his life, he decided to remain certainly in his country of Peru. He died on December 4, 1994, days in the wake of getting the Juan Rulfo Prize for Literature.
25. On August 31, 2022, Google featured a Doodle on its homepage for celebrating Julio Ramón Ribeyro.