Paco Ignacio Taibo II
Paco Ignacio Taibo II (1949), a university professor, novelist, journalist, historian, and a pioneer of the new Latin American crime novel, was born in 1949 in Gijón, Spain. In 1958, he emigrated with his family to Mexico. He has authored approximately fifty works (novels, short story collections, history, reportage, and chronicles) that have been published in twenty-five countries and translated into twelve languages. Some of his novels have been named "Books of the Year" by the "New York Times," "Le Monde," and the "Los Angeles Times." In 1992, he won the Planeta/Joaquin Mortiz Prize, and he has been awarded the international Dashiell Hammett Prize for Best Crime Novel three times. His biography of Che Guevara, written in 1996, has sold over half a million copies worldwide and won the Bancarella Prize in 1998 as the "Book of the Year" in Italy. He is also the founder and organizer of the annual crime literature festival Semana Negra, Black Week, in Gijón, Spain.
