The author publishes 'Mil doscientos pasos', a novel in which he reviews his childhood memories and the passage to adolescence during the postwar period in Spain.

The writer and journalist Juan Cruz Ruiz looks back without anger and penetrates with the firm hand of a poet, who was a teacher and knows the importance of writing wise words in chalk on a blackboard that will not be erased by time.

His novel ‘Mil doscientos pasos’ (Alfaguara) rescues the lights and shadows of a turbulent time that he witnessed and lived through during the post-war years. Cruz Ruiz (Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, 1948), recalls the return of a man after many years of absence from the landscape of his origin and there he crosses the vital border that separates childhood from adolescence. ‘The one thousand two hundred steps’ of the title are the trail (and the face) of the distance that separates that man from the family home, marked by the traces of pain, violence, fear, and hatred. Evil deeds, secrets, friendships, and discoveries thread together an adventure of initiation and acceptance.

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