Ignacio GARCÍA-VALIÑO

© Sabine Geuer

Ignacio García-Valiño was a psycho-logist who plied his trade in the world of education. His extensive body of work includes the novels Urías y el rey David (Debate, 1997), La caricia del escorpión (Destino, 1998; Nadal Prize runner-up), Una cosa es el silencio(Destino, 1999), Las dos muertes de Sócrates (Alfaguara, 2003) and El corazón de la materia (Plaza & Janés, 2008). He also penned screenplays and published the YA novel El hilo de Ariadna (Anaya, 2003) and the children’s taleYago, el cocodrilo vegetariano(Buchman, 2008). His latest novels have been translated into several languages.

A school counsellor specializing in the treatment of conflictive teens, he drew on his own professional experience to write Querido Caín, (Plaza&Janés, 2006, runner-up for the Ciudad de Torrevieja Award), later adapted for the big screen by Jesús Monllaó under the name El hijo de Caín, as well as the essay Educar a la pantera (Debate, 2009).

He passed away in July 2014 after a lengthy, hard-fought battle against illness. His last work is the novel El ruido del mundo (Plaza & Janés, February 2014), in which he once again plumbs the depths of criminal psychology.

“Robbed too soon of the pleasure of his company, we are left with our memories and enough fine novels to keep the conversation going. Ignacio, Nacho, has left the clamour of the world behind him, and for an instant the world has become more silent, albeit no moreagreeable.” Martín Casariego, Obituary, El País 7-2014