Manuel Rivas is Galicia’s most international writer. He has published eight books in English: four novels, two poetry collections and two books of short stories (one a film tie-in, Butterfly’s Tongue). His novel The Carpenter’s Pencil, which has also been made into a film, is the most widely translated work of Galician literature and has been translated into thirty languages. His most recent novel, also a film, is All Is Silence, which was published by Harvill Secker in May 2013. With his book of short stories Vermeer’s Milkmaid & Other Stories, he won the Spanish National Prize for Literature in 1996. He works as a journalist and is a regular contributor to El País.

Photograph © Xurxo Lobato