Quiroga, Horacio (1878–1937)

Uruguayan writer of short stories. For his well-crafted fiction, Quiroga drew on his own attempts to live as a pioneer in the jungle province of Misiones, north Argentina, where he alternately taught and undertook overambitious business ventures. In his stories – collected in, for example, Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte/Stories of Love, Madness, and Death 1917 and Cuentos de la selva/Stories of the Jungle 1918 – the moral fibre of the central characters is constantly tested by hostile natural forces.

Quiroga's life was haunted by calamity. His father was accidentally shot dead while hunting; his stepfather committed suicide; he accidentally shot dead his best friend; and his first wife poisoned herself. Quiroga himself committed suicide.