Could you recommend some of these other writers? Because I quite liked The Alchemist, though I'm dubious of some of Paulo Coelho's philosophical ideas at times.
Borges and Marquez are the two I latin americans I'm acquainted with and they are overall the most famous too. Borges is always very brainy and philosophical in a very good way; sometimes he even ventures into flat-out mindfuck territories. He mostly wrote short stories that are consistently good. Marquez has a lovely vivid and very visual prose and writes either in a realist or slightly magical realist style. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera" are the pivotal points of his bibliography.
