Then Come Back : The Lost Neruda Poems

'The greatest poet of the twentieth century, in any language.' - Gabriel García Márquez

This stunning collection gathers together previously unknown poems found by archivists in boxes kept at the Pablo Neruda Foundation in Chile in 2014.

Neruda is renowned for poetry that casts away despair and celebrates living, fired by his belief that there is no unsurmountable solitude. Then Come Back presents Neruda's mature imagination and writing: signature love poems, odes, anecdotes, and poems of the political imagination. Translator Forrest Gander beautifully renders the eros and heartache, deep wonder and complex wordplay of the original Spanish, which is presented here alongside full-colour reproductions of the poems in their original composition on napkins, playbills, receipts, and in notebooks.

Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems simultaneously completes and advances the oeuvre of the Nobel Laureate. Discovered during the cataloguing of Neruda's papers, there are 21 poems in all, together with detailed notes about how they relate to his published work.

With 20 colour illustrations.

Pablo Neruda: Pablo Neruda was born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile, in 1904. He served as consul in Burma and held diplomatic posts in various East Asian and European countries. In 1945, a few years after he joined the Communist Party, Neruda was elected to the Chilean Senate. Shortly thereafter, when Chile's political climate took a sudden turn to the right, Neruda fled to Mexico, and lived as an exile for several years. He later established a permanent home at Isla Negra. In 1970 he was appointed as Chile's ambassador to France, and in 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Pablo Neruda died in 1973.
Forrest Gander: Forrest Gander is a poet, translator, and professor at Brown University. His many honors include the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative North American Poetry and a Guggenheim Fellowship; his books have been named finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.