Antonio Soler (novelist)

After a further two novels he published Las bailarinas muertas (The Dead Dancing Girls), winning the Premio Herralde[2] and establishing his reputation as a key exponent of modern Spanish narrative.

In an article in El Pais in 2014, Professor Paul Preston is quoted as saying, "I don’t like reading novels about the Civil War, but an exception was Soldiers in the Fog, written by Antonio Soler some twenty years ago, which blew me away.” (“Prefiero no leer novelas de la Guerra Civil, aunque como excepción me chifló una de Antonio Soler de hará unos veinte años: El nombre que ahora digo.”)[3] He has repeated the sentiment more recently in seminars at the Cañada Blanch Centre (LSE), commenting that it is one of the few novels to capture the sense of confusion and disorder prevailing during the siege of Madrid.

[4] Soler's novel Sur (2018) describes one day in the life of the city of Málaga through a cast of some 250 characters, as they endure the oppressive heat of the terral wind.

Soler was writer in residence at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, and has given courses and lectures at numerous universities and cultural institutions in Europe, Latin America, the US and Canada.

[6] He is a founder member of the Order of Finnegans, a literary group created in honour of James Joyce's novel Ulysses, which takes its name from a pub in Dalkey, Ireland.