Héctor Aguilar Camín is a journalist, writer and historian. Throughout his career he has combined journalism with fiction and political and historical non-fiction. He has been a researcher at the National Institute of Anthropology and History and received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. His first novel, Morir en el golfo (Dying in the Gulf, 1985), was adapted for cinema and in 1988 he won the Mazatlán Prize for Literature with the book Un soplo en el río (Blowing on the River). His fiction is considered to be part of a wave of ‘new realism’ that combines social criticism with political observation. In 1986 he received the National Prize for Cultural Journalism and in 2001 the Government of Chile awarded him the Gabriela Mistral Medal for Educational and Cultural Merit.