The writer, journalist and critic José María Guelbenzu (Madrid, 1944) has died this Friday at age 81 in the capital of Spain, as reported by 'El País', a half with which he collaborated.
He started his career in the magazine 'Notebooks for dialogue'. In 1970 he joined Taurus and assumes his editorial direction seven years later, position that would compatible since 1982 with the Alphaguara editorial direction. In 1988 he left both positions to devote himself to literature.
Critic in the 'Babelia' supplement of 'El País' and a regular collaborator of 'Magazine de Books', has been a jury of various awards (such as the National Literature or the Nadal Prize).
He has won the Award of Critics of Narrative (1981), the International Award for the Plaza & Janés (1991), the Sánchez Ruipérez Foundation Award for Journalism (2007) and the Torrente Ballester de Narrativa Award (2010). He is the author of a total of nineteen novels, six of which belong to the police genre.
In a recent interview with Europa Press, on the occasion of the publication of his latest novel, 'A drop of affection', the writer assured that he, as an editor, would not have published the book of Luisgé Martín 'El Odio', in which José Breton confesses the children of his two children Ruth and José, because he had no interest in the murderer and because, he said, it is a book “Bad”.
“If I were the editor of that book, I would not have published it. Not for nothing, but because it seems bad to me. That is the only issue (…) I am not very funny, I have no interest in that murderer and I think it is a bad book. That's all. It is a personal opinion, “Guelbenzu explained.
In his latest novel, set in an old house with a family shield in a town in Cantabria, the author tells the story of a “wounded” man since his expulsion from the paradise of childhood, an international official dedicated to help projects in underdeveloped countries who chose to exercise a blind sovereignty about reality.
