Bernardo Atxaga was born in Gipuzkoa in Spain in 1951 and lives in the Basque Country, writing in Basque and Spanish. He is a prizewinning novelist and poet, whose books, including Obabakoak and The Accordionist's Son, have won critical acclaim in Spain and abroad. His works have been translated into twenty-two languages. Margaret Jull Costa has been a literary translator from Spanish and Portugese for over twenty years, translating such writers as Jose Saramago, E a de Queiroz, Luis Fernando Verissimo and Fernando Pessoa. Her work has brought her a number of prizes, the most recent of which was the 2010 Premio Valle-Inclan for Javier Marias' Your Face Tomorrow 3- Poison, Shadow and Farewell.
A brilliantly inventive writer... He understands the nature of storytelling and is at once terribly moving and wildly funny. --A.S. Byatt