Almudena Grandes, the "award-winning Spanish writer and ardent feminist who shot to fame with an erotic novel about a woman rebelling against social norms," died November 27 at age 61, the New York Times reported. Grandes wrote more than a dozen novels, featuring protagonists who "mostly live on the edges of traditional Spanish society, either struggling against its sexual restrictions or marginalized by poverty. She was also a left-wing activist who had set about writing a six-novel series focused on Spain in the aftermath of its civil war of the 1930s. She completed five volumes."
Grandes's breakthrough came in 1989 with the publication of Las Edades de Lulú (The Ages of Lulu), which "won a literary prize for erotic fiction, sold more than a million copies worldwide and was turned into a movie by the director Bigas Luna, with a cast that included Javier Bardem in his first screen appearance," the Times said. Her other books include Malena es un Nombre de Tango (Malena Is the Name of a Tango) and Los Aires Difíciles (The Wind From the East), both of which were adapted into films. Her last published novel, the fifth installment in her series about the Spanish Civil War, La madre de Frankenstein (The Mother of Frankenstein), was released in 2020. The Ages of Lulu is available from Seven Stories Press ($13.95).
