Pareja, of a conservative family, was part of a “socialist generation” in Ecuador. He lived through considerable political turmoil in the 1920s and concluded that his country’s salvation lay on the left side of the political spectrum. He denied, however, being a “left-winger” and insisted that he did not Desire to use the fiction writer’s art as an instrument of propaganda. Rather, he sought to simply and directly depict social conditions that called for redress, while denouncing those in power who were guilty of corruption and injustice. His first novel, La casa de los locos (1929), satirized Ecuadorian politics and attacked so many real people that publication was considerably delayed. Pareja attested to the strong influence of the Mexican Writer and Politician José Vasconcelos. Other major literary influences included the Greek Classics, Balzac, Dostoievski, Thomas Mann, Will Durant and Arnold Toynbee. Some critics have also detected the influence of Freud, Ehrenburg, Gide and Proust in him.