Like a rain-swollen river sweeping everything into its current, Pablo Neruda channeled all his life experiences into impassioned poetry that ultimately brought him the 1971 Nobel Prize for literature. His close friend and fellow writer-activist Volodia Teitelboim shared that exciting process for forty years, uniquely qualifying him to offer this intimate portrait of the poet. Originally published in Spain in 1984, Neruda is a biography that reads like a novel.

Teitelboim captures the whole sweep of Neruda's eventful life (1904-1973), from his motherless childhood in Chile's rainy southern forest to his unquiet death just twelve days after the violent overthrow of the Allende government he had served. He follows him through his bohemian youth as an impoverished university student in Santiago, his lonely existence in Southeast Asia consular outposts, his joyous discovery of Spain, and his lifelong devotion to poetry, love, Chile, and politics.