José María Merino

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José María Merino, 2015

José María Merino (born March 5, 1941 in La Coruña ) is a Spanish writer and man of letters. From 2010 to 2015 he was Vice Secretary of the Real Academia Española . For his work, which consists of poems, novels, children's and youth literature, essays and so-called “microrrelatos” ( short stories ), Merino has received several awards.

life and work

Merino spent his childhood and youth in León until he settled in Madrid, where he studied law. He worked for UNESCO as part of their educational projects related to Latin America , which he got to know through travels. Between 1987 and 1989 he was head of the Center for Spanish Literature in the Ministry of Culture . However, his main interest has always been in literary work, especially narration and novels. Since 1996 he has devoted himself exclusively to literature.

Merino started with poetry, but then turned to novels and short stories as well. He is considered the main representative of Spain for the genre of short and shortest stories ("microrrelatos"). His work also includes children's and youth literature as well as travel literature. As a literary critic, Merino writes for the Spanish magazines Leer and Revista de Libros as well as for the daily newspaper El País .

Merino limits its microrrelatos to a length of two sides. They begin with an everyday situation ("[...] as ordinary as possible ...") in which the reader can easily find themselves, and then end with the addition of an inexplicable phenomenon in the fantastic. Merino inserts the fantastic into recurring elements: the inanimate lives or has magical powers (e.g. a book that makes its reader disappear), bodies separate from their brains or body parts that develop a life of their own; Metamorphosis , travel or fantasy landscapes are further elements. Merino often deals with the topic of boundaries between dream and reality in his short stories. He lets sleepless people experience a fantasy world at night. He says that his dreams are often the inspiration for his stories and that he himself often suffers from insomnia, which he processed in his book Tres semanas de mal dormir ( English : three weeks of bad sleep). Another recurring element in Merinos Microrrelatos is humor.

He has collected several volumes of short stories in the anthology 50 stories and one fable from 1997.

Works (selection)

  • El oro de los sueños. Roman, Alfaguara, Madrid 1986 (German: Das Gold der Träume. Translated by Eveline Urban. Arena, Würzburg 1993, ISBN 3-401-01739-X ).
  • El viajero perdido. Stories, Alfaguara, Madrid 1990 (German: Der verirrte Reisen. Translated by Eva Steiner. Stockmann, Bad Vöslau 2007, ISBN 978-3-9501612-8-1 ).
  • Los trenes del verano - No soy un libro. Children's book, Siruela, Madrid 1993 (German: Summer between the Worlds: [I am not a book]. Translated by Paula Peretti. Spectrum, Munich 1994, ISBN 978-3-7976-1468-1 ).

Awards

  • 1983: Premio Novelas y Cuentos for Novela de Andrés Choz
  • 1985: Premio de la Crítica (Spanish State Prize for Literary Criticism) for La orilla oscura
  • 1993: Premio Nacional de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil (Spanish State Prize for Children's and Youth Literature) for No soy un libro (German: Summer between the Worlds: I am not a book)
  • 1996: Premio Miguel Delibes for Las visiones de Lucrecia
  • 2003: Premio Ramón Gómez de la Serna for El heredero
  • 2008: Premio Castilla y León de las Letras for his complete works
  • 2013: Premio Nacional de Narrativa for El río del edén
  • 2013: Premio de la Crítica de Castilla y León for El río del edén

literature

  • Antonio Candau: La obra narrativa de José María Merino. Diputación Provincial, León 1992, ISBN 84-87081-57-6 .
  • Ángeles Encinar; Kathleen Glenn: Aproximaciones al mundo narrativo de José María Merino. Edilesa, León 2000, ISBN 84-8012-298-6 .
  • Cheng Chan Lee. Metaficción y mundos posibles en la narrativa de José María Merino. Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid 2005, ISBN 84-8448-330-4 .

Web links

Commons : José María Merino  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biografía. From: cervantes.es, accessed July 5, 2018.
  2. ↑ Pujante Cascales Basilio: Los microrrelatos de José María Merino. In: El cuento en Red, No. 17, Spring 2008, pp. 52–59, ISSN  1527-2958 , accessed on August 12, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Merino, José María
BRIEF DESCRIPTION spanish author
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH La Coruña