His 1985 novel and film Ardiente paciencia ("Burning Patience") inspired the 1994 Academy Award-winning movie, Il Postino (The Postman). Subsequent editions of the book bore the title El cartero de Neruda (Neruda's Postman). His fiction has since received dozens of awards and has been translated into nearly thirty languages worldwide.
Skármeta studied philosophy and literature both in Chile and at Columbia University in New York. From 1967 to 1973, the year he left Chile (first to Buenos Aires an