Author Profile: Andrés Barba is a Spanish writer.
Name: Andres Barba
Timeline:
2008 – Such Small Hands
2010 – August, October
2002 – The Right Intention
2012 – Rain Over Madrid
2020 – A Luminous Republic
Background: Andres Barba was born in 1975 in Madrid Spain. He is 45 years old. Barba has worked as a Spanish teacher to teach the language to foreigners at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He has also taught at Bowdoin College. Presently he gives writing workshops.
Genre: Andres Barba uses both knowing and affectionate genre conventions, in his work. A deep awareness of gothic literature gothic conventions is seen in his novel, Such Small Hands.
Literary Contributions: Andres Barba’s novel La hermana de Katia gained him his very first popularity. The novel was nominated for the Premio Herralde. Mijke de Jong turned the novel into a movie.
In 2006 his major work, Versiones de Teresa won the Premio Torrente Ballester (es). In 2010 his work Muerte de un caballo was winner of the Premio Juan March. In 2017, Republica luminosa won the Premio Herralde.
Andres Barba was included in the Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists lists, published in the year 2010, by the Granta magazine. His work has been translated into a number of European languages. As an author he has attained success in translating numerous American and English classics as well into Spanish.
His novels, La recta intencion (2002), Ahora tocad musica de baile (2004) and Versiones de Teresa (2006) were awarded the Torrente Ballester Prize.
The Juan March Prize was awarded for his novels Las manos pequenas (2008), Agosto, octubre (2010) and Muerte de un caballo (2010). Barba won the Anagrama Essay Prize in collaboration with Javier Montes, for La ceremonia del porno (2007).
Unique Stylistic Features: Las Manos prequenas, his novel in Spanish was released in English, as ‘Such Small Hands (Transit Books, 2017). Lisa Dillman translated it. Authors like Edmund White announced this novel.
Such Small Hands is Andres Barba’s novel about a traumatized and wounded seven year old girl, whose parents were killed in a car accident. She survives the car accident and is sent along with a doll, ‘her only surviving friend’ to an orphanage. Her distress is so much that the doll is brought to life. The ghost story conventions are played by the author Barba while creating a powerful fable of erotic play and malice of very young children and using words to describe their fears.