Chile. He studied journalism at the University of Chile and earned a Ph.D. in Spanish and Latin American Literature from Stanford University. He is the author of five novels: El invasor (1997); Movimiento falso (2000), a finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos International Prize in 2001; La calma (2005); El día de los muertos (2007); and Las muertes paralelas (2010). He has published the essay La máquina de pensar de Borges (2003) and the collection of travel chronicles Lugares de paso (2012). He is a literature professor at the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University in Santiago, Chile, and at Diego Portales University.