Instituto Cervantes Londres and the University of Warwick inaugurate a new phase of academic and cultural collaboration with the Cervantes–Warwick Annual Lecture, a forum for dialogue devoted to contemporary literature in Spanish and its international projection.
This inaugural edition features Marta Sanz as its guest speaker, one of the most solid, incisive, and widely recognised voices in contemporary Spanish fiction.
The lecture offers an encounter between literary creation and critical thought, in which the author will reflect on her work, her writing processes, and the tensions between literature, the body, politics, and language that run throughout her career.
With a body of work encompassing fiction, essays, and poetry, Marta Sanz has developed a committed literary project that challenges dominant discourses and explores new ways of representing subjectivity and contemporary experience.
This joint initiative reinforces the commitment of the Instituto Cervantes and the University of Warwick to the dissemination of culture in Spanish, intellectual exchange, and the strengthening of ties between the university sphere and the reading public.
The Cervantes–Warwick Annual Lecture is conceived with the ambition of becoming a permanent forum for literary thought, open to students, researchers, writers, and all those interested in literature and cultural debate. Marta Sanz’s participation inaugurates a programme that foregrounds authors who engage critically with their times, consolidating the lecture series as a key reference point for the study and reflection on Spanish-language literature in an international context.
Marta Sanz holds a PhD in Philology. With Anagrama she has published the novels Black, black, black (“Admirable. It has the cruelty and desolating lucidity of one of Patricia Highsmith’s finest novels, Edith’s Diary” — Rafael Reig, ABC); Un buen detective no se casa jamás (“Once again she demonstrates her mastery of language (and its games) and of the satirical register (detective fiction, the romance novel), through an outstanding narrative” — Manuel Rodríguez Rivero, El País); Daniela Astor y la caja negra (Tigre Juan Prize, Cálamo Prize, and Estado Crítico Prize) (“Hypnotic, fascinating, and harrowing” — Jesús Ferrer, La Razón); a revised and expanded version of La lección de anatomía (“She has succeeded in positioning herself as a major reference in Spanish literature or, in Rafael Chirbes’s words, ‘on the top rung’” — Sònia Hernández, La Vanguardia); Farándula (Herralde Novel Prize) (“Very good. Remarkable style. Talent, brilliance, vitality, nerve, verbal inventiveness, truth” — Marcos Ordóñez, El País); Clavícula (“One of the rawest, most brutal, and merciless books I have read in a long time” — Leila Guerriero); a new edition of Amor fou (“One of Marta Sanz’s most painful novels… The wounds it leaves behind are a form of lucidity” — Isaac Rosa); pequeñas mujeres rojas (“A literary brutality, a verbal display that astonishes” — Luisgé Martín); and Persianas metálicas bajan de golpe (“A literary proposal so singular, so different… that it aligns with our finest tradition” — Sara Mesa). She is also the author of the essay Monstruas y centauras (“Extraordinary” — María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros, Mercurio) and the diary Parte de mí (“A wonderful pandemic diary whose origins do not diminish its stylistic rigour” — Carmen R. Santos, El Imparcial). Her most recent work is Los íntimos.
