Arturo Pérez Reverte (Spain 1951)

Arturo Perez Reverte deserves a medal. Almost single-handed, he's got his countrymen to buy books. According to one study, half the population of Spain never reads a book, in spite of feverish publishing activity, with more than 60,000 titles published in 1999, some 9,000 of which were works of fiction. Perez Reverte started out as a journalist, and worked as a war correspondent in various African countries for the daily Pueblo. Later he became a familiar face in Spanish households as a war correspondent for Spanish national television. He still contributes articles to the Spanish media, but no longer works as a reporter, having become a full-time novelist.

Perez Reverte is one of Spain's most translated contemporary writers, with most of his major novels available in English. Some have also been adapted for the screen, but the author is the first to recognize that his novels don't translate well into movies. The Club Dumas was adapted as The Ninth Door, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Johnny Depp, and was released in 1999 to mixed reviews.

Between 1996 and 1999 Perez Reverte produced a series of light pop books, based on a swashbuckling character named Capitán Alatriste. In 2000, he returned to more serious fiction with La Carta Esférica, inspired by the author's life-long fascination with the sea and sailing. The main character is a sailor who is banned from working on a boat for two years, and embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of an 18th-century shipwreck. Critics are nominating this as his most important work together with The Club Dumas.

Biography:: "The Club Dumas", "The Flanders Panel", "The Fencing Master", "The Seville Communion", "The Husar"...