Donoso is the author of a number of short stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom.

Coming from a comfortable family, nonetheless during his childhood he worked as a juggler and an office worker, long before he developed as a writer and teacher.

[1] Donoso graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from Princeton in 1951 after completing a senior thesis titled "The Elegance of Mind of Jane Austen: An Interpretation of Her Novels Through the Attitudes of Heroines.

In 1957, while he lived with a family of fishermen in the Isla Negra, he published his first novel, Coronación (Coronation), in which he described the high Santiaguina classes and their decadence.

[6] In the Summer term, 1975, Donoso taught a workshop in writing the novel in the Comparative Literature Department at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire USA.

In 1981, after his return to Chile, he conducted a literature workshop in the which, during the first period, many writers like Roberto Brodsky, Marco Antonio de la Parra, Carlos Franz, Carlos Iturra, Eduardo Llanos, Marcelo Maturana, Sonia Montecino Aguirre, Darío Oses, Roberto Rivera and, very fleetingly, Jaime Collyer, Gonzalo Contreras, and Jorge Marchant Lazcano, among others.

At the same time, he continued publishing novels, even though they did not reach the same level of acclaim as his preceding works:[citation needed] La desesperanza (Curfew), the novellas Taratuta and Naturaleza muerta con cachimba (Still Life with Pipe) and Donde van a morir los elefantes (1995).