About the Author: Jesús Ferrero

Jesús Ferrero is a Spanish writer born in 1952 in the Spanish province of Zamora.

After completing his secondary education he studied literature in Zaragoza for a while and then moved to Paris to study ancient Greek history at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.

Jesús Ferrero, like Javier Marías or Antonio Muñoz Molina, is a writer of that new Spanish prose which developed after La Movida Madrileña (Madriliene Movement), one of the early post-modern currents. He has written numerous novels, poetry collections, short stories, essays and screenplays. He is, among other things, co-author of Pedro Almodóvar's film Matador.

Ferrero's debut, chinese-set novel 'Belver Yin' (1981) was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed in post-Franco Spanish literature, and helped him to establish himself as one of the major writers of La Movida years. With novels set in Tibet ('Opium', 1986), Barcelona ('Lady Pepa', 1988) or Berlin ('Débora Blenn', 1988), Ferrero continued during the eighties a literary exploration characterized by eclectic intertextuality.

Jesús Ferrero’s writing shows a rebirth of the old myths and also tells of the banal, sometimes absurd everyday stories. It reflects the utopias of the twentieth century like those of 'Metropolis'. Ferrero’s style has been seen as close to that of Cervantes or Kafka. The author loves adopting classical narrative patterns while also modernizing and using them aesthetically with new stylistic features.

Since 1995 he has been living in Madrid where he teaches literature.