Daniel Sada

Daniel Sada Villarreal (February 25, 1953, in Mexicali, Baja California – November 18, 2011, in Mexico City) was a Mexican poet, journalist, and writer, whose work has been hailed as one of the most important contributions to the Spanish language.

Life Sada was born in Mexicali in 1953. He studied journalism and Spanish literature in Sacramento, Coahuila, showing especial affinity for the works of Dante and Ovid. Sada later said of his early influences, his first contacts with literature, and the metric structures he admired: "I have a deep knowledge, from childhood, of the most elemental constructions of these metric forms, so characteristic of Spanish. In my primary school in Sacramento, Coahuila, Panchita Cabrera, a rural schoolteacher who was an ardent fan of the Spanish Golden Age (a type that no longer exists) taught us these phonetic techniques with one goal in mind: that we might fine-tune our ears in order to appreciate the expressive delicacy and virulence of our language".

Legacy Sada’s novels stand out for their internal rhythm and unorthodox use of archaic metric forms and colloquialisms. His work has been described as baroque and tragicomic. Author Juan Villoro stated: "He renewed the Mexican novel with Because It Seems to be A Lie, the Truth is Never Known". According to Roberto Bolaño: "Daniel Sada is undoubtedly writing some of the most ambitious works in the Spanish language". Rafael Lemus said: "Sada...is one of the most extreme reformers of the (Spanish) language, the boldest among Mexicans".

In 2008, he won the prestigious Herralde Prize for his novel Almost Never. He also won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in 1992 and the Jose Fuentes Mares National Literature Prize in 1999. In the hours before Sada’s death 2011, he was awarded Mexico's prestigious National Prize for Arts and Sciences in the literature category.

Films based on his fiction 2004 - Una de dos. Directed by Marcel Sisniega. 2007 - El Guapo. Directed by Marcel Sisniega (based on Luces artificiales).