Spain and Portugal for Visitors

Grandes is one of the greats of contemporary Spanish literature. She famously achieved recognition with Las Edades de Lulú (The Ages of Lulu), which won the then prestigious Sonrisa Vertical (Vertical Smile) prize for erotic fiction in 1990 or thereabouts. The great mystery is why she has not been invited to join the Real Academia de las Letras, when a total dickhead (literarily speaking) like Pérez-Reverte has.

I wouldn't mind Pérez-Reverte quite so much if he wasn't always spouting on about what a good writer he is because he writes "stories." He is light years from being a good writer, and even his storylines are weakly. I have to include him here, though, because so many of his books have, inexplicably to me, been made into films, and because he is, even more inexplicably, a member of Spain's Real Academia de las Letras.

Real name Joseba Irazu Garmendia, Atxaga is a Basque writer who writes in Basque, though he translates himself into Spanish (his blog linked to here has some content in English, as well).

Author of the best-selling La Sombra del Viento (The Shadow of the Wind), Ruiz Zafón writes cracking stories, usually with ghosts or something esoteric in the backdrop, which are as literate as they are fast-moving.

One of Spain's most respected contemporary novelists.