Benedetti, Mario, 1920–2009, Uruguayan writer, one of Latin America's most popular, influential, and prolific authors. The son of Italian immigrants, he grew up and was educated in Montevideo. Benedetti wrote more than 80 books including novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and essays. He was also a respected literary, film, and theater critic and the editor of political and literary journals. Politically active and a supporter of left-wing causes, he lived in exile (1973–83) during Uruguay's military rule and later spent much of his time in Spain.
The most frequent themes in Benedetti's work are political struggle and love. His best-known work is probably the novel La Tregua (1960, tr. The Truce, 1970), the tale of a romance between a middle-aged man and a younger woman that was widely translated and made into an acclaimed 1974 Argentinian film. A selection of his short stories were translated in Blood Pact and Other Stories (1997) and a number of his poems in Little Stones at My Window (2003).
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