Gustavo Sainz

Who is Gustavo Sainz?

Gustavo Sainz is a Spanish language author from Mexico.

Born in Mexico City, the son of journalist José Luis Sainz, Gustavo Sainz learned how to read at the age of three from his paternal grandmother, and started publishing his work in the city newspapers at the age of ten. When he was in primary school, Sainz founded several school magazines, which he continued to do until college. At the age of eighteen, Sainz left home to work as a journalist in the magazine Visión. In 1960, he entered the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where he began studying law, but ultimately changed to study literature. Sainz's first novel, Gazapo, was published when he was twenty-five and has been translated into fourteen languages. This novel marked the beginning of the literary movement "la Onda", of which other Mexican writers, such as José Agustín and Parmenides García Saldaña, formed part.

In 1968, Sainz travelled to the University of Iowa to participate in the International Writing Program, where he started and completed his second novel, Obsesivos días circulares. Sainz's longest novel, A la salud de la serpiente, relates his adventures of this period in Iowa.