María Elena Gertner

María Elena Gertner began her literary career with the 1950 poetry collection Homenaje al miedo.^[3] In this way, she was classified within the "generation of 1950" – also called the "generation of 1957"^[4] – of which her novel Islas en la ciudad is considered one of the six key works.^[5][b] Among her early creations, the theatrical works La mujer que trajo la lluvia and La rosa perdida stood out. In 1964, she won the CRAV Award with her story "El invencible sueño del coronel".^[1][4]

She began acting in 1952, when she was a member of the Experimental Theater of the University of Chile [es].^[1] Later, she participated in the Art Theater of the Ministry of Education and in chamber theaters, exhibiting her previously mentioned theatrical stories as an actress and stage director.^[1] She also starred in the 1971 film Voto más fusil [es] by Helvio Soto.^[6]

Gertner wrote several telenovelas for Televisión Nacional de Chile. One of the most controversial was La dama del balcón [es] (1986), which included several Nazi characters and referred to the Third Reich, as well as genetic experiments. Because of this, the telenovela suffered censorship by the Social Communication Division [es] (DINACOS), a body established during the military regime.^[7]

In 2005, Gertner received the Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit.^[8]

Regarding the novel Islas en la ciudad, the poet Marietta Morales Rodríguez described it in the following way in the magazine Cinosargo: "The main character is the city. A Santiago that turns people into islands and represents the isolation of conflicts."^[4]