20 poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada »

When presenting the legendary Chilean poet Pablo Neruda with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, Karl Ragnar Gierow of the Swedish Academy proclaimed, "Neruda is like catching a condor with a butterfly net. Neruda, in a nutshell, is an unreasonable proposition: the kernel bursts the shell."

A perennial bestseller since it was published in Chile nearly 70 years ago. Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada caused a scandal at the time of its publication because of its frank and intense sexuality.