Pablo Neruda

Neruda's most commercially successful and beloved work is "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair," published in 1924 when he was just 19 years old. It remains one of the best-selling poetry books in the Spanish language.

Pablo Neruda died in a clinic in Santiago, Chile, in 1973, just 12 days after the military coup that overthrew his friend, President Salvador Allende. While his death was officially attributed to prostate cancer, an international forensic team later found traces of a deadly bacteria in his remains, prompting ongoing murder investigations.

Neruda won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971 for his passionate, surrealist-inspired poetry that often blended personal passion with sweeping political history. The Nobel committee cited his ability to bring the elemental forces of nature into the realm of human emotion.

Yes, the 1994 Academy Award-winning film "Il Postino" (The Postman) features Pablo Neruda as a central character. The plot revolves around a fictional postman who strikes up a friendship with the exiled poet in Italy and learns how to write poetry to woo a local woman.