Quick Facts
Biography
Denzil Romero (1938–1999) was a Venezuelan writer. He was born in Aragua de Barcelona on July 24, 1938 and died in Valencia on March 7, 1999.
Career
The son of teachers, his love for literature was awakened from very young:
I never learned to swim, I only raised the occasional parrot and I am the son of schoolteachers, so I can say without bragging that at age 15 I had already read classic Spanish literature. I admit that in my development I was influenced by some writers, of which I'll only name Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges, José Donoso, Juan José Arreola, Reinaldo Arenas, Marcel Proust, William Faulkner ... and from there, Ramos Sucre, Arvelo Torrealba, Enrique Arvelo.
He became a lawyer, and was also professor of philosophy and literature.
He is considered one of the foremost writers of historical novels in the context of Venezuelan literature. His point of view of the reconstruction of historical fact obeys its own laws of narrative fiction. Some historians and writers, including Luis Alberto Crespo, have defined Denzil Romero's style of referring to his "exaggeration of reality" with a combination of the historical with the esoteric and the erotic with pseudo-realistic.
Prizes
- 1983 Casa de las Américas Prize.
- 1999 La Sonrisa Vertical Award for La esposa del Dr. Thorne.