Almudena Grandes

Almudena Grandes Hernández (Madrid, 7 May 1960) is a Spanish writer.

She studied geography and history at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She is married to the poet Luis García Montero. In 1989 she won the La Sonrisa Vertical prize with her erotic novel Las edades de Lulú, which has been translated into several languages. Bigas Luna made a movie based on this book, as did Gerardo Herrero with Malena es un nombre de tango and Juan Vicente Córdoba with El lenguaje de los balcones in his film Aunque tú no lo sepas.

As Emilie L. Bergmann said, her novel Las edades de Lulú (1989) "represented a breakthrough for eroticism in women's writing".

Later in her career, with Ines y la alegria (2010), she gets the prize of literature "Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz".

Her books speak about the Spanish people in the last quarter of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century. She shows in them a great realism and an intense psychological introspection.

Almudena Grandes highlights the influence, especially during her adolescence, and marks the works of authors like Benito Perez Galdos, Daniel Defoe –in particular his work Robinson Crusoe– and Homer with his Odyssey . These works mark the attachment felt by the author by survivor archetype characters, not necessarily castaways, but muddling people, who survive one way or another, against the heroes, antiheroes, etc. Moreover, as many other Spanish writers, it is important to note the large influence of Cervantes, that will inspire Almudena Grandes to build complex stories, small stories and more extensive ones.

Almudena Grandes is a regular columnist of El País newspaper and broadcasting programs such as Cadena SER. She has been distinguished because of her left political position, having shown her public support for Izquierda Unida (a left-wing Spanish party). Because of this, in April 2007, she was one of the signatories of a manifesto, in which a group of intellectuals considered it unacceptable to commit acts of terrorism, in addition, during the demonstration after the ETA's T-4 of Adolfo Suarez Barajas airport attack, she read the statement "For peace, life, liberty and against terrorism." That tragedy, in which two people died, was the end of the "ceasefire" that kept the terrorist organization in the negotiations between the government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and the criminal organization.

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