Evelio Rosero was born in Bogota in 1958. He studied Social Communication at the
Externado University in Colombia. He is the author of the trilogy “Primera Vez”
(“First Time”) made up of the novels Mateo
solo (Mateo Alone, 1984), Juliana los mira (Juliana Looks On, 1986) and El
incendiado (The Burning Man,
1988, II Pedro Gómez Valderrama Prize to
the best Colombian novel published between 1988 and 1992). His later
novels, Señor que no conoce la luna (The Man Who Did Not Know the Moon,
1992), Las muertes de fiesta (The Deaths of Feasting, 1995), En el lejero (In the Distance, 2003), and Los
almuerzos, which we now make available in Spain, as well as his books of
short stories Las esquinas más largas
(The Longest Corners, 1998) and Cuento para matar un perro y otros cuentos
(To Kill a Dog and Other Stories,
1989) have been the subject of study and of theses. In 2006 he was awarded the National Prize for Literature in Colombia,
but it was in 2007 with his novel Los
ejércitos (The Armies), winner of
the II Tusquets Editores Prize for Novel,
that he became internationally known. The novel has been translated into seven
different languages and has received the Independent
Foreign Fiction Prize in the United Kingdom. About the book, the jury
claimed, “It is a novel of love, war and pain written with utmost beauty”.