Juan Carlos Márquez was born in Bilbao in 1967. He graduated in information science and then studied journalism, but has been a full-time writer and creative writing teacher for several years. He has been nominated twice for the Setenil Prize for Short Fiction, as well as for the prestigious International Ribera del Duero Short Fiction Prize. He has won the José Nogales Prize (2010), the Rafael González Castell Prize (2005) and the Juan Rulfo Prize to the best debut writer (2003). James Womack was born in Cambridge in 1979, and has lived in Madrid since 2008, where he works as a freelance translator and author. He has translated numerous works from Spanish and Russian into English.
"Juan Carlos Márquez is one of the safest possible bets in this current generation of Spanish short-story writers." Ángel Basanta, El Mundo "Without running the risk of falling into hyperbole, you could call this author an amazing discovery, with his magnificent prose and admirable imagination. Now, when it seems that the whole of the literary terrain has been conquered and colonised by styles which are récherché and finickity, by genres which are strange and flimsy, by any kind of desperate or delirious approach (as if the well of literature had run dry and everyone had to run around looking for alternatives like crazy diviners), then to come across an author like Juan Carlos Márquez is to be able to put all these ideas to one side, and regain the pleasant notion that literature is as infinite and as inexhaustable as human life itself, and that sometimes, out of the deluge of books that we are offered, an author can appear, unconnected to the major commercial channels, and remind us that in this ocean that we have sailed for almost a thousand years of literary history we have never so far passed out of sight of the shore." Ignacio Gómez-Cornejo Gilpérez, La tormenta en un vaso "From a formal perspective, Tangram is a bravura display of writing. A treat for anyone who cares about the language. Márquez has a style which is simultaneously expressive and precise. Precise because shock, humour, fear all exist in this work but do not take control of it: the important thing is the way the work fits together, not flashy effects. Márquez manages to make the reader uncertain whether to laugh, take offence, or even question his own feelings." Recaredo Veredas, Culturamas "We find ourselves lucky enough to be faced with a book that is extremely inventive and powerfully focussed." Carlos F. Romero, Con L mayúscula "A fractured mirror; a set of stories, pieces of a puzzle that combine to form a whole." Judges' Report, Euskadi Novel Prize, 2012 "Juan Carlos Márquez's prose is some of the most carefully worked writing that it is possible to find. His novel is a literary game right from its title onwards, as it gives us story after story and sets us the enjoyable and fascinating task of reading them and putting them together." Awarding Committee, Sintagma Prize 2011
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