Manuel Rivas
SpainAbout
Manuel Rivas (born in 1957 in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain) is a Galician writer, poet, journalist, and screenwriter whose work has helped bring Galician literature to international audiences. He began working as a journalist while still a teenager and went on to become one of the most prominent literary voices writing in the Galician language. His fiction often explores memory, political repression, environmental concerns, and the resilience of ordinary people under authoritarian rule. His internationally acclaimed novel The Carpenter’s Pencil (O lapis do carpinteiro, 1998) examines the Spanish Civil War through the intertwined lives of a political prisoner and his persecutor. His short-story collection What Do You Want from Me, Love? won Spain’s National Narrative Prize in 1996. Rivas has received numerous other literary honours, including the Spanish Critics’ Prize. His writing combines lyrical language, dark humour, and political engagement, frequently giving voice to people and histories overlooked by official narratives.
