Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.