Albert Sánchez Piñol

Albert Sánchez Piñol is currently the most translated Catalan writer. He started studying Law, but he finally went into Anthropology. While conducting fieldwork among the pygmies of the Congo, a civil war broke out, which forced him to leave his work unfinished and quit the country. However, his stay in Africa has strongly influenced his literary work.

He published his first book of short stories, The Ages of Gold, in 2001. Many of these stories already show his preferences for the fantastic, which became very apparent in his first novel Cold Skin (2002), about two people trying to survive an attack by mysterious underwater creatures on a deserted island near Antarctica. This is the most translated novel in the history of Catalan literature, into a total of 37 languages. Later, he publishedPandora in the Congo, where some European explorers in the late nineteenth century encounter an underground race living inside a mine in Congo, which threatens to destroy humanity.

After publishing a second book of short stories, Thirteen Sad Trances, Albert Sánchez Piñol embarked on what has been his most ambitious novel to date, Victus, published in 2012. This historical novel relates the events that lead to the Catalan defeat on 11 September 1714, through the eyes of military engineer Martin Zuviría. Victushas been the best-selling novel in Catalonia for four consecutive years. In 2015 he published the sequel, Vae Victus, in which he continues the adventures of Zuviría after the war.

Albert Sánchez has also turnedhis hand to  non-fiction with his book Clowns and Monsters, about the lives of eight African dictators.

Source: Eurocon 2016