Javier Cercas

The Spanish author Javier Cercas was born in 1962 in Ibahernando, in the province of Cáceres. He worked for two years at the University of Illinois and, since 1989, has been a professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Girona and a regular columnist for "El País." His work, translated into more than 20 languages, includes the following: "The Motive" (1987), "The Tenant" (1989), "The Belly of the Whale" (1997), and "Soldiers of Salamis" (2001, published by Patakis Publishers, translated by Elissos Logothetis), a book that achieved international acclaim and received praise from authors such as Mario Vargas Llosa, J.M. Coetzee, Doris Lessing, Susan Sontag, and George Steiner, who wrote: "Soldiers of Salamis should be ranked among the classic works." This was followed by "The Speed of Light" (2005, Patakis Publishers, Athens Prize for Literature from the magazine "Dekata"). In 2010, he was awarded the Spanish National Novel Award for his book "Anatomy of a Moment." "The Tenant," first published in 1989, is considered his early masterpiece and is translated into many languages.