Ecuadorian novelist and poet that was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1988, Nelson Estupiñán Bass (1912 -2002) was also one of the leading voices of the Afro-Latin literary movement, being of African heritage and born into the Afro-Ecuadorian coastal province of Esmeraldas. Trained in accounting, while working in that field, he developed his writing career by publishing a series of literary journals in his community.
In 1950, at the age of 38, Bass gained international renown with the publication of his novel, When the Guayacans Were in Bloom, which related the how Afro-Ecuadorians were exploited by both conservative and liberal factions during Ecuador’s 1895 Liberal Revolution. The book has since been translated into English, French, and R
