Who Was H. G. Carrillo? D. T. Max on a Novelist Whose Fictions Went Too Far
H. G. Carrillo was a writer\u2019s writer\u2014not a household name, but esteemed in literary circles. He began writing later in life, and was in his mid-forties when his first novel, \u201cLoosing My Espanish,\u201d was published. The book, which describes a Cuban-immigrant experience, was hailed as a triumph of Latino fiction; Junot D\xedaz praised the author\u2019s \u201cformidable\u201d talent, calling his \u201clyricism pitch-perfect and his compassion limitless.\u201d Carrillo went on to literary positions in and outside of the academy. He was an early casualty of the COVID pandemic, dying in the spring of 2020 at the age of fifty-nine. But his obituary\u2014instead of tying a bow on the historical record\u2014unspooled in quite a different direction, revealing secrets that Carrillo had worked for decades to conceal. For two years, the staff writer D. T. Max has been trying to trace what happened, and why.