Alfredo Bryce Echenique
| Alfredo Bryce | |
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Alfredo Bryce in 2007
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| Born | Alfredo Bryce Echenique February 19, 1939 Lima,  Peru
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| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Peruvian |
| Alma mater | National University of San Marcos |
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Alfredo Bryce Echenique (born February 19, 1939) is a Peruvian writer born in Lima. He has written numerous books and short stories.
Bryce was born to an Anglo-Peruvian family of upper class, related to John Bryce Weddle, ancestor of the Marquesses of Milford-Haven and of the duchesses of Abercon and Westminster. He was the third son and the fourth of the five children of the banker Francisco Bryce Arróspide and his wife, Elena Echenique Basombrío, granddaughter of the former President José Rufino Echenique.
Bryce studied elementary education at Inmaculado Corazón school, and high school at Santa María school and Saint Paul's College, a British boarding school for boys in Lima. Upon the wish of his family Bryce Echenique studied law in the National University of San Marcos until 1964. His literary interest nevertheless prevailed and so, shortly afterwards, he completed a parallel study course in literature with a thesis on Ernest Hemingway. In 1988 he adopted Spanish nationality without losing Peruvian one.
He received a grant from the French government which, like many other Latin American authors of the boom period, led him to Paris. At the Sorbonne he studied classic and modern French literature and then taught at various French schools and universities.
His first book Huerto Cerrado published in 1968, was a finalist for the Casa de las Américas literary prize awarded in Cuba and is a collection of short stories written in different styles and points of view about a young protagonist, Manolo, a member of Lima's upper class, as he comes of age in 1950s Lima. This was followed by his first novel, Un Mundo para Julius, published in 1970 that became a big success and counts today as one of the classics of Latin American literature. The novel, which has since been translated into ten languages, tells the story of a young boy who grows up as the youngest of four children of a rich, Peruvian upper-class family. Although Julius actually belongs to the ruling classes he feels a stronger bond with the servants which surround him and this brings him into conflict with his family. With biting irony the author exposes, through the eyes of a child, the great social differences in Peruvian society.
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