Fortes, Susana 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born 1959, in Pontevedra, Spain. Education: Graduated from University of Santiago de Compostela; graduated from University of Barcelona.

CAREER:

History professor in Valencia, Spain.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Premio Nuevos Narradores, 1994, for Querido corto maltés.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Querido corto maltés, Tusquests Editores (Barcelona, Spain), 1994.

Las cenizas de la Bounty, Espasa Calpé (Madrid, Spain), 1998.

Tiernos y traidores, Editorial Seix Barral (Barcelona, Spain), 1999.

Fronteras de arena, Espasa (Madrid, Spain), 2001.

El amante albanés, Planeta (Barcelona, Spain), 2003, translation by Leland H. Chambers published as The Albanian Affairs, McPherson (Kingston, NY), 2006.

El azar de Laura Ulloa, Planeta (Barcelona, Spain), 2006.

OTHER

Adiós muñeca (collected articles), Espasa Calpé (Madrid, Spain), 2002.

Fortes's novels have been translated into Greek, Dutch, German, French, and Portuguese.

SIDELIGHTS:

Novelist Susana Fortes has been widely published in Europe, but her first book to be translated into English did not come until 2003, when her El amante albanés was released in the United States as The Albanian Affairs. A complex tale of political oppression and marital infidelity, the novel features Ismail, a poet living in communist Albania. His father, a government official, has recently died, possibly the result of a murder. Trying to understand why his father had always been so cold toward him, Ismail undertakes a mission to find out what had killed his mother years before. Meanwhile, he also starts to fall in love with his brother's wife, Helena. His investigations lead him to an earlier love triangle involving his parents and his mother's lover, a doctor named Gjorg. When Ismail's brother, Viktor, who, like their father, is a government official, comes to suspect the affair, the dangerous parallels between the past and present become clear. A Kirkus Reviews critic lauded the novel as a "powerful meditation on the destinies of love's outlaws."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2006, review of The Albanian Affairs, p. 863.

Publishers Weekly, August 28, 2006, review of The Albanian Affairs, p. 26.