Horacio Quiroga, a Uruguayan author who settled in Argentina, is considered to be one of the most important Latin American short story writers of all time. His work displays a personal language, far from the style of European modernism and the avant garde. The influences of such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling and Guy de Maupassant are evident in his masterly depiction of the violence and horror beneath the surface of the apparent tranquility of the natural world.