Death of Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda died on 23 September 1973 in Santiago, aged 69. A Chilean poet, Neruda took his pen name from a Czech writer and became one of the most widely read poets of the twentieth century. His Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, published in 1924, made him famous while still young, and he later wrote the sweeping epic Canto General. He worked as a diplomat in Asia, Spain and Mexico, joined the Communist Party and served as a senator, which forced him into hiding and exile for a time. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. A supporter of President Salvador Allende, he died in Santiago just days after the military coup of September 1973.

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