Eduard Márquez (Barcelona, 1960) is a novelist and short story writer, for both adults and children. Although he first became known with two collections of poems published in Spanish, the main part of his work is constituted by novels and the short stories in Catalan.

He first published two volumes of short stories, Zugzwang (1995) and L'eloqüència del franctirador (The Sharpshooter's Eloquence, 1998), with which he made the antology Vint-i-nou contes menys (Twenty-nine Stories Less, 2014). He wrote the novels Cinc nits de febrer (Five Nights in February, 2000), El silenci dels arbres (The Silence of Trees, 2003), La decisió de Brandes (Brandes' Decision, 2006) –which was awarded the Catalan Critic's Prize, the Octavi Pellissa Prize and the QWERTY Prize from Barcelona TV– and L'últim dia abans de demà (The Day Before Tomorrow, 2011). In the domain of children's literature, he has written several books, such as Aurèlia i el robaombres (Aurèlia and the Thief of Shadows ,2002) Les granotes de la Rita (Rita's Frogs, 2002), L'Andreu i el mirall de les ganyotes (Andreu and the Face-pulling Mirror, 2004) and the series of the superheroe XXL, amongst others. Eduard Márquez says that he pours into his children's books the magic and imagination that are not so present in literature for adults.

In general, Márquez's work is notable for his quest for abstraction over specific settings and chronological time. He moves to the innermost being of his characters and describes their obsessions. He is a fine-tuned stylist, his prose following the internal rhythm of the language and coming close to music. This way of working leads him into a calculated, controlled narrative structure wherein nothing is left to chance, despite an apparent spontaneity. He excels in the genre of the short novel.

He has work translated into Italian, German, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and Turkish.

He is a member of Associació d'Escriptors de Llengua Catalana (Association of Catalan Language Writers).



Web page: Eugènia Morer i Serra and Josep Miàs for AELC.
Translated by Josep Miàs.
Photographs: © Toni Coll i Tort (cover) and © Judit Contreras.