MEXICO CITY: Mexican writer Ignacio Padilla, a leading member of the so-called “crack movement” that sought to help the country’s authors find a voice beyond magical realism, has died in a car accident. He was 47.

Mexico’s ministry of culture said on Saturday that Padilla died the previous night in an accident in the central state of Queretaro.

In 1996, Padilla along with writers Jorge Volpi, Eloy Urroz, Miguel Angel Palou and Ricardo Chavez published what became known as the “crack manifesto” for Mexican authors to break with the traditional magical realism of the Latin American literary boom led by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and others.

In 1994, Padilla won the Juan Rulfo award for his first novel The Cathedral of the Drowned.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2016