Mallea was associated with Argentina's avant-garde from the late 1920's and for 15 years, greatly influenced Argentine letters in his position as Literary Director of the newspaper La Nacion. "History of an Argentine Passion,"' a spiritual and intellectual autobiography, has been widely read throughout Latin America. His view of the world basically existentialist, Mallea is concerned with people's loneliness, lack of communication, and alienation. He utilizes stream-of-consciousness techniques and disjunctures of chronological time to portray inner realities. Mallea names as literary influences Blake, Rimbaud, Kierkegaard, Unamuno y Jugo, Kafka, Joyce, and Proust. He was among the first to introduce the techniques of these European novelists to Argentina. Mallea won the Buenos Aires Municipal Prize for prose in 1935 and the National Prize for literature in 1937.