Mario Benedetti Farrugia (14 September 1920 – 17 May 2009) was a distinguished Uruguayan journalist, novelist, poet, and a prominent member of the Generación del 45. Despite his prolific output of over 80 books and translations into twenty languages, Benedetti was not widely known in the English-speaking world. However, in the Spanish-speaking world, he is celebrated as one of Latin America's most important writers of the latter half of the 20th century.

Benedetti contributed to the Uruguayan literary movement and served as the literary director of the renowned weekly newspaper Marcha from 1954 until it was closed by the military government in 1973. During the dictatorship from 1973 to 1985, he lived in exile and returned to Uruguay in 1983 following the restoration of democracy.