A short life of the author
Antonio Muñoz Molina (b. 10 January 1956) was born in Úbeda, Jaén, Andalusia. He studied journalism in Madrid and art history in Granada. He was elected to the Real Academia Española in 1995 and directed the Instituto Cervantes in New York from 2004 to 2006.
Life and Career
El invierno en Lisboa (The Winter in Lisbon, 1987) — a noir-inflected novel about a jazz pianist in Lisbon — won the National Narrative Prize and the Spanish Critics Prize. El jinete polaco (The Polish Rider, 1991) — inspired by the Rembrandt painting — won the Planeta Prize and the National Narrative Prize.
Sefarad (Sepharad, 2001) — a novel-in-stories about exile, persecution, and displacement across the twentieth century — is his most ambitious work: a meditation on the experience of being uprooted that draws on Jewish, Spanish, and Eastern European histories.
En la noche de los tiempos (In the Night of Time, 2009) — about the Spanish Civil War — and Como la sombra que se va (Like a Fading Shadow, 2014) — which interweaves the author’s time in Lisbon with James Earl Ray’s flight through Lisbon after assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. — are major achievements.
Major Works and Themes
Muñoz Molina writes about memory, exile, history, and the moral weight of the past on the present. His fiction combines cinematic structure with dense psychological interiority.
Key Works
- Sepharad (2001)
- Like a Fading Shadow (2014)
Collecting Muñoz Molina
Spanish originals (Seix Barral, Alfaguara) are the primary collected form. English translations bring $10–$25. He signs at Spanish literary events.