Hugo Wast

Gustavo Adolfo Martínez Zuviría (October 23, 1883 – March 28, 1962), best known under his pseudonym Hugo Wast, was a renowned Argentine novelist and script writer.

Martínez Zuviría first used the pen name "Hugo Wast" for his 1911 novel, Flor de Durazno (Peach Blossom) - his first commercial success.

He was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 1916 as a Conservative and received the National Literary Prize for his realist novel, Desierto de piedra (Stone Desert), but he was also known for his antisemitism - established with his inflammatory Oro (Gold) - and his ideological association with French "integrisme," a Catholic nationalist doctrine associated with the National Front.

[3] He was appointed director of the National Library of Argentina in 1931,[4] and in 1943, as Minister of Public Instruction for the newly installed military government of General Pedro Ramírez, he reinstated religious education in public schools, thus breaking from a sixty-year secular tradition in Argentine education.

[3] A souring of relations with the Catholic Church on the part of President Juan Perón led to Wast's dismissal as National Library Director in 1955.