Roberto Echeverran is a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he studied philosophy and law. He then pursued graduate studies in philosophy at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany and received his Ph.D. at the University of Paris VIII. Echevarren and taught at the University of London before a twenty-year career teaching at New York University. He has published five novels, notably his last three short novels combined under the title Archipielago (Archipelago). He was recently awarded the 2021 Amado Alonso International Prize of Literary Criticism for his book El pensamiento chino (Chinese Thought).