"What one hopes for, one dreams of, is that one’s literature will reach a universal reader"... Antonio Muñoz Molina (born in Ubeda in 1956) has finally and unassumingly achieved his dream, by natural right.

Five years on from winning the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature, the universal man from Jaen is a finalist for the Man Booker International with the most "American" of his novels, Como la sombra que se va (translated into English as Like a Fading Shadow). Alongside him on the longlist for the prestigious award are Javier Cercas with El impostor and Gabriela Ybarra with El comensal, which for Muñoz Molina represents a moment of "arrival and international presence" for Spanish literature", having gone through periods of isolation and exoticism... "The worst thing that can happen to you is to be thought exotic."

Read more here: EL MUNDO