Javier Cercas talks to Boyd Tonkin

International-award-winning Spanish novelist Professor Javier Cercas talks about his life and work as one of a group of well-known writing in the genre of ‘historical memory’ focused on the Spanish Civil War and the Franco period.

Cercas’s best known works include million-selling Soldiers of Salamis, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, The Speed of Light and Outlaws, both shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and The Imposter, winner of the European Book Prize. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. They explore themes such as truth, memory, war and the persistence of the past are often set around characters who have lived through the civil war and its aftermath. His most recent book published in English is Prey for the Shadow, part of a detective series based in Barcelona that features a conflicted hero in Melchior Marín.

Cercas is a professor of Spanish literature at the University of Girona. He was Weidenfeld Visiting Professor of European Comparative Literature in St Anne’s College, Oxford, in 2014 to 2016. Here he talks to author, journalist, literary critic and chair of the 2016 International Booker Boyd Tonkin.

Part of the festival’s programme of Spanish and Latin American literature and culture.