Madrid, España, 1963
Belén Gopegui is a landmark author in narrative of the last twenty years. She holds a law degree from the Autonomous University of Madrid, but soon abandoned the idea of becoming a lawyer to embark on a literary career, writing for various publications. She published her first novel, La escala de los mapas, in 1993. It was met with great acclaim from critics and the general public alike. Her prose is characterised by a careful choice of language and uncompromising view of the world we live in, which often appeals to readers to take a second look at where they are and their commitment to the society they live in. Belén Gopegui has written novels, plays and young adult fiction. Some of her books have been adapted for the big screen.
- “Belén Gopegui makes consummate use of the novel as an instrument of political inquiry, reflection and interpellation, in the broadest sense.” Ignacio Echevarría
- “Belén Gopegui is my bunker.” María Unanue, Pikara Magazine
- “To break the barriers between the individual and the collective, the private and the public. That’s one of the narrative projects pursued by Belén Gopegui.” Rafael Conte
Bibliography
An essay that dissects the current world in seven luminous reflections navigating the waters of science and ethics, philosophy and literature.
Small Mortal Wounds unfolds like a torch that illuminates the modern cave and presents us with seven reflections filled with references to science and human behaviour, but always with philosophy and literature as compasses to unveil the meaning of things and life.
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Short stories and novellas
Non-fiction
Books for children and young readers
Novel
Because it would be possible to live differently.
A heart-warming novel about loyalty and living together.
In a neighbourhood in Madrid, Lena, Hugo, Ramiro, Camelia and Jara have managed to turn the flat they share into a communal living space. They are all in their forties and they live together out of necessity and also because it is part of their way of understanding coexistence and personal relationships. But Jara has a more unstable character than the others and her situation is precarious: she hasn't had a job for a long time and she lives on the edge. Is this why she has left without warning and without even leaving a note indicating her whereabouts?
Existiríamos el mar is a breath of energy that leads us along the paths where fragility and strength, the difficult and the possible, new beginnings and different forms of perseverance and loyalty come together. Belen Gopegui has written a moving, bold novel about shared lives where the most intense experiences do not reside in the darkest or murkiest side, but rather – sometimes, most of the time – in moments of respect, laughter, conversation, happiness, mutual support and shared anger.
“She once again defends goodness and kindness from a political perspective and talks to us about the principles that make life more liveable. This is about living together without hurting each other, on the border between honesty and anger.” Marta García Miranda, La hora extra
“A novel that invigorates and shakes up the reader; a draught of fresh air that changes the meaning of slamming doors by opening them suddenly but noiselessly, and not closing them. Wonderful.” Bop Pop
“Breaking the barriers between the individual and the collective, the private and the public. This is one of the narrative projects being pursued by Belén Gopegui.” Rafael Conte
An intergenerational novel that dissects human relationships and criticizes social inequality and technological dehumanization.
Two generations, two lives that were not called to meet, will intimidate Google
This novel is the story of Mateo and Olga, as well as a job application with Google as the recipient. Mateo is twenty-two, interested in robots, and obsessed with discovering whether or not merit could be used to measure the world of human relationships. Olga is a mathematician and entrepreneur in the area of forecasting and decision making using statistical models. Like the killer and the victim in detective novels, the two meet in a library, and the magical objects that bring them together are books about robotics. This could be a love story in the sense that encounters, dialog, and the desire to hear the other person’s voice create a common narrative. And because, as in love stories, their coming together is also a clash between two different ways of being and understanding the world.
Mateo has his entire life ahead of him, and refuses to accept that that life cannot be written from a position of freedom. Olga, who is far past her halfway point, is not afraid to relegate herself to the bottom of a drawer. They are united by the same will to understand and feel what happens when a machine realises it’s a machine, when a robot realises it’s a robot.
The story of an encounter, two bodies, two intelligences. A young Dante and a Beatrice who is almost old travel through a space that is not Heaven, but not Hell either.
"Ms. Gopegui’s novel brilliantly steps into the middle of volatile and troubling debates about artificial intelligence, ethics and the meaning of personhood….This book has excited me more than any that I have read this year, as much for its tenderness as for its insights.” Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
"Gopegui leavens the high-mindedness with a cool sense of irony, and shines with her succinct insights on the similarities between humans and AI...Readers will be intrigued."Publishers Weekly
“A beautifully written, endlessly provocative meditation on humanity’s relationship to technology, monopoly, memory, and fate.” Dave Eggers
"Belén Gopegui brandishes her pen as a sword as she charges straight at one of the tech giants. . . . The release of this English translation is timed perfectly. It adds a literary dimension and intellectual depth to an escalating discussion previously mined by writers such as William Gibson (Neuromancer) and Jennifer Egan (The Candy House), both standout examples of fiction reflecting the relationship between technology and society."–Lanie Tankard, The Woven Tale Press
“In the author’s hands, what first unfolds before our eyes like a social novel, a book full of keys to understanding this complicated present of ours, becomes pages of exhilarating lyrical intensity, as well as an agonizing thriler.” Culturamas
"Unique and fascinating, Stay This Day and Night With Me pushes beyond the political and philosophical debates of its characters to deliver a much needed dose of humanity in the face of emerging corporate, unknowable, and inhuman intelligence." Tim Maughan, author of Infinite Detail
"...you cannot help but being fascinated by the issues that come up in this book and the discussions between Olga and Mateo. You might argue that this could have been simply written down in essay form but that is a bit like saying that Tolstoy could just have written a historical account of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia." The Modern Novel
“Belén Gopegui makes consummate use of the novel as an instrument of political inquiry, reflection and interpelation, in the broadest sense.” Ignacio Echevarría
"Lo que nos propone Belén Gopegui es una vuelta de tuerca: no ya el individuo que lucha contra el robot sino el robot que lucha contra la deshumanización de los humanos. Esta paradoja tiene más alcance del que parece porque la novela insinúa asimismo la posibilidad de que Olga y Mateo no sean tan humanos como se creen." Iñaki Ezkerra, El Correo Español
"Two people who love robots meet in a library. A philosophical dialogue ensues. The writing is delicate, strange, and strangely riveting: Gopegui slides between registers and scales with uncommon grace. This is a book about two human beings and also what it means to be a human being in the algorithmic age. This is a book about Google, capitalism, and the ordinary unhappiness of being alive."–Ben Tarnoff, author of Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future
"With the Digital Age as the backdrop, Gopegui creates a novel that is as analog as they come: a conversation between two people, their philosophical debates and tender connection. As a result, she crafts a potent interrogation of the status of our modern life." Bennard Fajardo, Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington, D.C.
"A thrillingly unclassifiable book of ideas about the inherent tension between being an individual while also being part of a community–and whether one's individual or communal identity is ever truly primary. Gopegui's novel is a study of empathy and human connection in a time of algorithms and tech giants, extending curiosity not only towards her very human characters, but also towards the corporate machinery that governs their lives, and the lives of her readers." –Adrienne Celt, author of End of the World House
'El poder de la novela es pequeño pero incontrolable', Reseña, El País, 20 sept 2017
'El poder de Google no es democrático', Reseña, Público, 20 sept 2017
'Cinco notas sobre Quédate este día y esta noche conmigo', por Gonzalo Torné, CXT, 17/10/2017
Alex, mother of one daughter, has lost her job and has no choice but to move back in with her parents. One night, after a demonstration ends in altercations, a woman approaches her and asks if she’s willing to do more than just protest. That’s how Alex joints the Organisation. Carla is lucky: she’s found a job, but like many others of her generation, the offer comes from abroad. Carla emigrates to Bratislava, where she goes to work for a company that produces medications derived from blood. Everything seems fine until one day her boss meets with her in a café, far from the lab, and asks her to participate in a sinister plan to privatise the sale of blood plasma. For Carla, it’s not just a choice between her ideals and interests. The life of the person she loves most is at stake, in exchange for the lives of thousands of innocent people. Like Alex, Carla must choose whether or not to fight for a better world. Once the decision is made, they have no choice but to go all the way.
Written with the agonizing pace of a thriller, Belén Gopegui’s new novel possesses that rare quality that profoundly moves readers by confronting them with the reality of their time.
“In the author’s hands, what first unfolds before our eyes like a social novel, a book full of keys to understanding this complicated present of ours, becomes pages of exhilarating lyrical intensity, as well as an agonizing thriller.” Culturamás
A hacker manages to infiltrate the Vice President’s personal computer. The intruder does not reveal his identity; he only wants to chat with her and find out something very intimate, something that she probably hasn’t discovered herself yet. In exchange for such intimacy, he offers her confidential information relating to shady corporate dealings affecting the running of the presidential cabinet. A close but anonymous relationship arises between the two of them, highlighting the moral corruption of power and the need to renew one’s dreams when everything seems to be lost. An unusual political thriller that confronts the root of the crisis head-on, along with the lack of values and credibility of those who govern us.
Something happened to Martina on the 4th of December. Since then, she’s been seeking fury, attitude or anything else to stay true to her code. She’s sixteen and has nowhere to belong, but finds the beginnings of a story in rock & roll while Alice Cooper watches from the rooftops, when punk is a state of mind, and hurting oneself doesn’t mean admitting the people responsible for all this are right. Quite the contrary: it proves there are people who aren’t afraid to lose something in order to live.
“Belén Gopegui returns to fiction with a generational novel, Deseo de ser punk. And she does so by appealing to that evocative magnitude usually found in the best rock lyrics and melodies.” J. Ernesto Ayala-Dip, El País
“Outstanding psychological portrait of an adolescent girl, for which I find no comparison in our fiction of the past few decades.” Ricardo Senabre, El Mundo
“The touching story of Martina, a cocktail of The Catcher in the Rye and punk, results in a realistic, well-accomplished novel, committed to a sacrificed generation.” Livres d’Hebdo
“In this coming-of-age novel, written in the form of a musical journey, Belén Gopegui draws a bittersweet portrait of a generation devoid of points of reference, with no hope of a bright future.” Transfuge
Una profesora de filosofía en un instituto, casada y madre de tres hijos, envia una queja al supermercado porque el pedido no le fue entregado en el horario pactado y los congelados se estropearon. La consecuencia de esta protesta es el despido del repartidor, un hombre que irá a pedirle responsabilidades. El acto de «llevar las consecuencias de los problemas adonde se originan» trastocará la existencia de esta familia de clase media.
En el cuento tradicional, el padre de Blancanieves está en el castillo, asiste a las maquinaciones de la madrastra pero guarda silencio. ¿Por qué no advertimos que estaba ahí? ¿Existe la clase media o es una ficción hermosa y triste? ¿Puede el padre de Blancanieves llevar su ánimo a la altura de su espíritu?
«Con esta novela Belén Gopegui alcanza su cota más ambiciosa.» Rafael Conte, El País
En el año 2003 Philip Hull, un diplomático estadounidense destinado en Madrid, se ve envuelto en un laberinto al a
«Buen ejemplo de lo que llamaríamos literatura social, con un desenlace polémico y atrevido.» Alejandro Gil Ramírez, Qué Leer
«Una complejidad digna de Graham Greene.» Francisco Umbral, El Mundo
Recounts the inevitable ascent of a senior executive at TVE, Spain’s national TV broadcaster, built on lies and pretence as engines of social climbing, a self-made avenger adept in the art of accumulating useful information. The story is narrated by a co-worker in decline accompanied by a chorus of salaried workers. The novel covers the final years of the Franco regime, the NATO referendum, the 14 December strike, and
“Belén Gopegui’s important career as a novelist becomes even more forceful.” Rafael Conte
“The best thing I read in Spanish in 2002 was Lo real.” Sebastián Edwards, La Tercera, Chile
Carlos Maceda pide a sus dos mejores amigos, Santiago Álvarez y Marta Timoner, dinero para sufragar la crisis de su pequeña empresa de electrónica. Ellos aceptan dejárselo y, a partir de ese momento, las decisiones de sus vidas quedan a la intemperie, como si el acto de prestar y recibir dinero les hubiera dejado expuestos
.La novela fue llevada al cine en el año 2000 por Gerardo
Un conocido profesor de teatro embarca en un proyecto a cuatro de sus alumnos. Se trata de crear un espejo de carne y hueso. Los cuatro tienen la impresión de ser usurpadores, habitantes privilegiados de la ciudad; ninguno se atreve a merecer su futuro; los cuatro desean, cada uno a su modo, que el p
Sergio Prim is a staid, middle-aged geographer. The romantic advances of Brezo Varela, a lively young woman who shares his profession, induce a series of terrifying hallucinations from which he attempts to seek refuge by immersing himself in the quest to map a place in which love never results in disillusionment. A lyrical examination of language, imagination, and desire.
"What is astonishing about this novel is the originality of its narrative strategies in harmony with the rhythm of its prose." Carmen Martín Gaite
"A fable of love-laid waste, an almost scientific story of the anguish of existence, a profoundly and deliberately distorted image of perverse reality, its space and time, a tragedy replete with tenderness and humor." ABC Literario
The Scale of Mapsis a rapturous and dazzling achievement, and I, for one, am waiting impatiently for the opportunity to read more of Gopegui."–John Yargo, The Rumpus
"A geographer falls irredeemably in love with a flighty mapmaker in this graceful, peculiar Spanish tale . . . beautifully composed and elegantly translated."–Publishers Weekly
"Map scales are about relationships. So is The Scale of Maps, a poignant, provocative, profound and passionate book by respected Spanish writer Belén Gopegui."–The Kansas City Star
"'Gopegui's first novel; The Scale of Maps, is a story about a magic trick that Prim never quite masters, an ambitious disappearing act that ends in irredeemable failure. . . . "–Words without Borders
"It's an ambitious novel, to be sure, made beautiful by Gopegui's liquid prose, and made accessible by her ultimate refusal to answer her own questions." –Janet Potter, Bookslut
Short stories and novellas
Included in the anthology Cuentos de este siglo. 30 Narradoras españolas contemporáneas.
Non-fiction
An essay that dissects the current world in seven luminous reflections navigating the waters of science and ethics, philosophy and literature.
More than a book, this is a conversation in the form of a proposal for friendship, with seven discussions that delve into the contemporary world on subjects such as taking the bull by the horns, the seduction of villainous characters, using one's own imagination to understand others, resentment and fortune, environmental cataclysms, the small heroics of everyday life, the colours that paint our existence, or the meaning of life as a story we write together, sometimes unintentionally.
Small Mortal Wounds unfolds like a torch that illuminates the modern cave and presents us with seven reflections filled with references to science and human behaviour, but always with philosophy and literature as compasses to unveil the meaning of things and life. Gopegui unfolds the mission of knowledge, which, like light, illuminates our shelters, guiding us through a thousand and one maps at various scales of intellectuality, with the undeniable ethical and political commitment that bathes her novels.
An essay about self-help brimming with intelligent observation and social sensitivity.
El murmullo questions the basic premises of self-help manuals. These books often promise magical solutions to all our problems, as well as proposing shortcuts to the fulfilment of our desires and our dreams. However, the false promises are not the only problem. For the author, what is most criticisable is the way the readers are viewed as isolated individuals on whom all the blame must fall for not making an effort, for not being better, more ambitious, more optimistic, more successful or happier, as if all this depended solely on personal courage or willpower.
Belén Gopegui shows enormous insight in this analysis of the self-help genre and the conception of society underlying its precepts. By way of a countermeasure, she proposes a radically alternative user manual and reminds us that effective, lasting progress is achieved through organization and the collective struggle to solve the fundamental problems affecting our lives. The blame for all these problems cannot be placed solely on the individual. Rather, the responsibility for finding solutions must always be collective.
Far-removed from academic discourse, El murmullo is an unclassifiable book that combines a political and philosophical gaze and an astounding ability to portray, dissect and understand some of the mechanisms of human behaviour, all accomplished in writing of poised and intelligent beauty.
“Gopegui does not confine herself to posing questions; instead, she is takes a proactive approach. Her proposal is to encourage collective organization, the bonding of anonymous wills.” Babelia, El País
These pages offer a wide sample of the articles, prologues and essays published by Belén Gopegui over the last two decades; also of her talks, conferences and public events. The volume builds a framework of ideas and behaviors in which the poetics of one of the most singular and outstanding voices of contemporary Hispanic narrative has been forged. Poetics that, according to Damián Tabarovsky follows a unique and own plan consisting not in conceiving literature as something political, nor narrative as a way to criticize power, but in the opposite: conceiving the novel as a counter-power, writing as counter-politics, and reflection as a form of insurgency.
Belén Gopegui is a novelist. Her works, meant to occupy a singular place in the history of literature, narrate the matter of dreams and not only the dreams about matter, the mechanisms that move personal and collective relationships, the feelings that we imagine, the thoughts that we feel, the time in which we live and the secrets of the double life.
“A work of extraordinary singularity, which has earned the attention and respect of a wide and significant range of readers immune to the confusion”. Ignacio Echevarría
A love letter to a mother, a sister, and all those anonymous women whose achievements never see the light of day.
This essay is the product of a lecture delivered by Belén Gopegui in Madrid, as part of the series Women Aren’t Muses, and Men Aren’t Geniuses Either (2019). In it, the author draws on oral and family memory to reflect on the life and fate of her parents: Luis Ruiz de Gopegui, a reputable NASA astrophysicist, and Margarita Durán, a brilliant woman in the shadow who began caring for a daughter with cerebral palsy from a very young age.
However, this reflection that begins with a family tragedy soon evolves into a territory of hope and of “what is possible”. Always brilliant in her political reflections, and as a tribute to her mother, Gopegui ends up giving centre stage to millions of invisible women. Ella pisó la luna (Ellas pisaron la luna) (She Walked on the Moon, They Walked on the Moon) is a moving story that portrays struggle and sacrifice as a gesture of freedom in the face of arbitrary chance and fate. As a political gesture, it grabs us by the collar and says “Talk to your mothers!”
"To break the barriers between the individual and the collective, the private and the public. That’s one of the narrative projects pursued by Belén Gopegui." Rafael Conte
La autora fue invitada a impartir una conferencia, en septiembre del año 2006, en la Universidad de California, dentro de un ciclo de charlas internacionales que abordaban temas relacionados con la política y la literatura. Este libro recoge el texto de la conferencia que la autora española ofreció, con el añadido final de unas cuantas preguntas que se formularon al término del acontecimiento.
Books for children and young readers
Ilustrado por Rocío Martínez.
Mariú acaba de encontrar un disco duro, una especie de cuaderno con candado que a lo mejor esconde un misterio, o una pista para investigar. Pero lo que encuentra es una teoría con cinco pasos para enfrentarse a las cosas importantes de la vida, que ha escrito alguien que no conoce, aunque le encantaría saber quién es. Pero antes tiene que resolver algo más importante: su mejor amiga, está enfadada con ella.
Mariú quiere encontrar la paciencia que ha perdido su madre, pero no sabe por dónde empezar. Junto con Lía, un hada, emprenderá una búsqueda más allá de los sueños. ¿Dónde buscar algo que es inmaterial? ¿A qué lugar van a parar las cosas que se pierden y son invisibles? Una maravillosa aventura en el mundo de los sueños.
Es mentira: no se ven las estrellas cuando te dan un balonazo, y lo importante no es participar, porque todo el mundo quiere ganar, y lo que pasa en los libros nunca ocurre en realidad. Por eso, Daniel está harto. Y quiere jugar bien al fútbol para ganar la final, y que por una vez los piratas sean los buenos y se salgan con la suya. Una novela que propone la reflexión sobre la verdad y la mentira, sobre lo justo y sobre el poder de la amistad.
Prizes
- 1993 - Premio Tigre Juan for La escala de los mapas
- 1994 - Premio Iberoamericano de Primeras Novelas Santiago del Nuevo Extremo for La escala de los mapas
- 2009 - Premio Dulce Chacón de Narrativa Española for Deseo de ser punk