Almudena Grandes, writer and columnist, was born in Madrid in 1960, and began to publish so young and with such a forceful and immovable voice that she soon became a literary reference. From her first novel "The Ages of Lulu", she enjoyed one success after another: in narrative nothing resisted her, neither the erotic novel, nor the costumbrismo, the stories, the historical novel of the recent past or the analysis of the present.
He had a privileged ear for dialogues and an enviable narrative rhythm, which earned him the National Narrative Award in 2018: by then he had already immersed himself in a cycle of six novels that he titled Episodes of an endless war, and that covered the twenty-five years following 1939: from Inés and joy to Mariano in the Bidasoa, which was left incomplete, this work, of enormous ambition and with an unmistakable style, testifies to the process and maturity of an author who was heading towards writing of memory, and not only of occurrence. Because Almudena's intention was not only to narrate what happened during Franco's dictatorship, but also to understand our society as a consequence of that past.
His stories were transparent like all lasting ones, fresh and real, like those photographs taken without their protagonists knowing. Perhaps that is why his relationship with the cinema has always remained so close and so effective: a large part of his novels became successful films. He was moved by an enormous literary force, the necessary to tackle the task to which he had entrusted himself. She was quick, witty and sarcastic: not even her enemies could deny her success, nor her talent: and she made quite a few with her vitriolic articles and forceful opinions of hers.
Almudena died in Madrid in 2021. She left behind a posthumous novel, which does not belong to the Episodes, a poet husband, Luis García Montero, and a community of readers who mourned her with the sorrow of those who know that no one will tell the stories like her.
