Cercas Javier

Javier Cercas Mena, born on April 6, 1962, in Ibahernando, Extremadura, is one of the most influential Spanish writers of contemporary fiction. He moved with his family to Girona at the age of four but has maintained a strong connection to his Extremaduran roots, often reflected in his novels.

After earning a degree in Hispanic Philology from the University of Barcelona, he taught for two years at the University of Illinois and, since 1989, has been a professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Girona. He is also a regular contributor to the newspaper El País.

Cercas achieved international recognition with Soldiers of Salamis(2001), a novel that blends fiction and reality to explore the memory of the Spanish Civil War. He later published works such as The Anatomy of a Moment(2009), which analyzes the attempted coup d’état of 1981, and Lord of All the Dead(2017), focused on the figure of his uncle, a Francoist soldier.

In 2019, he won the Premio Planeta with Terra Alta, the first volume of a noir trilogy that includes Independencia(2021) and El castillo de Barbazul(2022). These novels mark an evolution in his style, addressing themes such as justice, revenge, and moral complexity.

In November 2024, Cercas was elected to the Real Academia Española, taking the “R” chair previously held by Javier Marías. In his induction speech, he emphasized the role of literature in questioning certainties and fostering a deeper understanding of reality.

Javier Cercas’s works have been translated into over thirty languages and are studied in academic institutions worldwide. Through his writing, he continues to explore the tensions between truth and fiction, memory and forgetting, making a significant contribution to the contemporary literary landscape.His latest novel is titled The Madman of God at the End of the World, published in Italy by Guanda and translated into more than thirty languages. The book, in which the author recounts his journey to Mongolia from August 31 to September 4, 2023, together with Pope Francis, was presented as part of the second event of the Previews of the International Literature Festival of Rome.

“An atheist, anticlerical militant secularist, a stubborn rationalist, a rigorous impious man.” These are the definitions by which the Spanish writer Javier Cercas introduces himself at the beginning of his new novel. The book, pervaded by a growing nostalgia for God, has a central focus: the intimate, one-on-one conversation between the author and the Pontiff, whom he defines as “the madman of God.”

This is an expression that Saint Francis—the name chosen by Jorge Bergoglio upon his election to the papacy—also used to describe himself.