Pablo Neruda's Reading List
The 5 books that shaped Pablo Neruda — poet & diplomat.
Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet whose passionate verse on love, politics, and nature made him the people's poet of Latin America.
Influential Books
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
Pablo Neruda(1924)
Neruda's breakout collection, written at 19 — sensual, urgent love poetry that made him Latin America's voice.
Canto General
Pablo Neruda(1950)
Neruda's epic poem of the Americas — geology, history, politics, and indigenous life in sweeping verse.
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman(1855)
Whitman's democratic, expansive poetry was a formative influence on Neruda's own inclusive, cataloguing style.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez(1967)
Neruda and García Márquez were friends and mutual admirers — two titans of Latin American literature.
The Odyssey
Homer
Neruda was obsessed with the sea and voyages. He translated a verse rendering of Homer's epic into Spanish.