As his father was the director of the National Library of Peru, he had the opportunity to read the works of many foreign authors. His work shows a strong influence of Edgar Allan Poe and, to a lesser extent, nineteenth-century Russian writers and symbolist and decadent French writers, as well as the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. His two short story collections "Cuentos malévolos" ("Malevolent Tales") (1904) and "Historietas Malignas" ("Malignant Tales") (1925) are in the style of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's "Contes cruels". Influenced by decadent themes and subject matter, they are filled with dark humor, blasphemy and the supernatural. His "Tres cuentos Verdes" (1922) were in the style of his father's "Tradiciones en Salsa Verde". He also wrote several novels, including "Mors et Vita" ("Death and Life") (1923) and "XYZ" (1934). This last novel has some similarities with the science fiction novel The Invention of Morel published by the Argentine Adolfo Bioy Casares in 1940.