Arguably the most widely read Latin American poet of all time, Pablo Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1971. This honor came as the culmination of more than fifty years of writing poetry that moved readers the world over, for Neruda's verses of love, nature, and politics were heard across borders. In the Nobel citation the Swedish Academy praises him "for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams." Both his lyrical voice and his committed, collective voice bespeak the passion and insightful observation that characterized his life and his works.

Born in Parral, a small town in southern central Chile, on 12 July 1904, Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto was the son of railroad engineer José del Carmen Reyes and elementary-school teacher Rosa Basoalto (who died of tuberculosis two months after the child came into the world...