in the Kent School. His first book, Veraneo y otros cuentos (Summer Vacation and Other Stories), was published in 1955 and won the Premio Municipal de Santiago (Municipal Prize of Santiago) the following year. In 1957, while he lived with a family of fishermen in the Isla Negra, he published his first novel, Coronación (Coronation), in which he described the high Santiaguina classes and their decadence. Eight years later, it was translated and published in the United States by Alfred A Knopf and in England by The Bodley Head. In 1958, he left Chile for Buenos Aires, returning to Chile in 1960. He started writing for the magazine Revista Ercilla in 1959 when he found himself traveling through Europe, from where he sent his reports. He continued as an editor and literary critic of that publication until 1964. He was also a co-editor of the Mexican journal Siempre. In 1961, he married the painter, writer and translator María del Pilar Serrano (1925–1997), also known as María Esther Serrano Mendieta, daughter of Juan Enrique Serrano Pellé from Chile and Graciela Mendieta Alvarez from Bolivia. Donoso had previously met her in Buenos Aires. They left Chile again in 1965 for Mexico and later Donoso was a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa from 1965 to 1967, when he moved with his wife to Spain. In 1968, the couple adopted a three-month-old girl from Madrid, whom they named María del Pilar Donoso Serrano, best known as Pilar Donoso. In 1981, after his return to Chile, he conducted a literature workshop in the which, during the first period, many writers like Roberto Brodsky, Marco Antonio de la Parra, Carlos Franz, Carlos Iturra, Eduardo Llanos, Marcelo Maturana, Sonia Montecino Aguirre, Darío Oses, Roberto Rivera and, very fleetingly, Jaime Collyer, Gonzalo Contreras, and Jorge Marchant Lazcano, among others. Later, Arturo Fontaine Talavera, Alberto Fuguet and Ágata Gligo attended, among others. At the same time, he continued publishing novels, even though they didn't receive the same repercussions as preceding works: La desesperanza (Curfew), the novellas Taratuta and Naturaleza muerta con cachimba (Still Life with Pipe) and Donde van a morir los elefantes (1995). El mocho (1997) and Lagartija sin cola (The Lizard's Tale) were published posthumously. Death José Donoso died of liver cancer in his house in Santiago, 7 December 1996 at the age of 72. On his deathbed, according to popular belief, he asked that they