Spanish author and journalist, born in
1951. Before his first full-length novel,
The Fencing Master (
El maestro de esgrima) appeared in
1988, Reverte had worked for over twenty years as a
war correspondent. Even now, he frequently returns to his experiences in
Western Sahara, the
Lebanon and
Bosnia in the weekly columns he writes for
El Semanal.
Several hundred of these pieces have now been published in two collections,
Patente de corso (
Letters Patent,
1998) and
Con ánimo de ofender (
With Intent to Offend,
2001). Unfortunately for the
Anglophone enthusiast of his novels, neither has been translated, despite illustrating many of the same preoccupations he's brought to his books.
His childhood growing up surrounded by the
naval heritage of
Cartagena has left him with a deep respect for
history, and a savage disdain for those who ignore it. The villains of
The Seville Communion have a
get rich quick scheme in mind which will mean demolishing a medieval church in the heart of old
Seville.
Since we're talking about villains, these sharp-suited financiers aren't to be confused with Reverte's rich parade of
small-time crooks. Reverte finds a certain dignity in the
honest thief, not the
gangsters of today but the old-fashioned
pickpocket or
find-the-lady huckster. The trio who provide one of
The Seville Communion's many subplots - a con man, an ex-boxer and the raddled
flamenco singer - belong to the same literary
Thieves' Guild as
scene-stealing Jacobean murderers and some
well-meaning gold robbers in a Mini.
Reverte, unincidentally, sat on the panel of a late-night radio programme
La ley de la calle (
The Law of the Street) for several years in the early 1990s, alongside assorted ex-cons, hookers and pimps. He recalls much more fellow-feeling with his panellists than with the executives who cancelled the show.
Despite his concern for Spain's past - his delight in
1998 at the success of an exhibition on
Philip II is almost palpable (as is his regretful glee in dreaming up the suitable
Boschian punishments for people who leave
graffiti on the walls of
El Escorial) - he's a long way from your average nostalgic imperialist. He recognises that Spain was built by
Castilians,
Basques,
Galicians,
Catalans and
don't sue me if I've missed out your home province, and wishes the Castilians, Basques, Galicians
et cetera would recognise it too. On top of his regular work, he's written a series of short novels about
Captain Alatriste, set in Spain's sixteenth-century
Golden Age.
Reverte's heroes, be they unscrupulous book-dealers or
Vatican envoys, all adhere in their way to his code of
chivalry - there's much of his own character in
Don Jaime Astarloa, the ageing
maestro de esgrima who's struggling to keep up a sense of honour fading from Spanish society, whether he realises it or not.
His women, on the other hand, can be his more unforgettable creations. The Revertean woman is alluring and mysterious, with an agenda of her own. There's
Tánger Soto of
La carta esférica (
The Nautical Chart), who pulls the unemployed sailor - a Cartagena boy - into her
Tintin-esque quest to find a sunken treasure
galleon. There's
Adela de Otero, who appears at Don Jaime's door one midnight to be taught his patented, unstoppable
two-hundred-ducat thrust.
El club Dumas (
The Dumas Club) offers two for the price of one:
Liana Taillefer, his take on
Milady de Winter of
The Three Musketeers, and
Irene Adler, the girl with
green eyes who shows an unerring ability to show up in the hero's path and is probably the part
Milla Jovovich was born to play.
Roman Polanski, however, chose to cast his pushing-forty wife
Emmannuelle Seigner when he filmed the book as
The Ninth Gate, and we shan't even go into what he did to the
plot.
Reverte's
bibliophilia underlies his novels too, most concretely in
The Dumas Club where
Lucas Corso (bafflingly renamed Dean by Polanski) is commissioned to track down three copies of a book which will supposedly
summon the devil.
La tabla de Flandés (
The Flanders Panel) contains a similar mystery depending on a
chess game depicted in the aforementioned panel by a Flemish
Old Master, which appears to reveal the truth about the Dukes of
Burgundy. The formula's earnt him comparisons to
Umberto Eco, and an assured position at the top of the bestseller charts every other year.
Most of his books acknowledge their literary inspiration in some way -
Dumas, of course, owes much to
Alexandre Dumas and
Sherlock Holmes, and to the less well-known swashbuckler
Rafael Sabatini. Sea-stories
ancient and
modern are deep in the veins of
The Nautical Chart.
As of
2002,
The Nautical Chart is the newest of his books to appear in English, but Spanish-speakers can treat themselves to his very latest,
La reina del Sur, (
The Queen of the South). Drawing its inspiration from Mexican
narcocorridos - a fusion of traditional ballads with lyrics about the
drug trade - the titular
Queen is
Teresa Mendoza Chávez, a Mexican housewife who becomes drawn into the trade to take revenge on a top
narcotraficante for the death of her husband. Enmesh her in smuggling over the
Straits of Gibraltar, imprison her in
El Puerto de Santa María when one of her deals goes wrong, teach her to read while she's behind bars, and bingo! You've got yourself a
Countess of Monte Cristo.
Oh, and the books?
1986, El húsar (The Hussar)
1988, El maestro de esgrima (The Fencing Master)
1990, La tabla de Flandés (The Flanders Panel)
1993, El club Dumas (The Dumas Club)
1994, Territorio comanche (Comanche Territory, his fictionalised memoir of reporting from Bosnia)
1995, La piel del tambor (The Drumhead, but appears in English as The Seville Communion)
1996, El capitán Alatriste (Captain Alatriste)
1997, Limpieza de sangre (Cleanliness of Blood, the preoccupation of The Spanish Inquisition; Alatriste #2)
1998, El sol de Breda (The Sun of Breda, Alatriste #3)
1998, Patente de corso (Letters Patent, his 1993-98 journalism)
1999, La sombra del aguila (The Eagle's Shadow)
2000, La carta esférica (The Nautical Chart)
2001, El oro del rey (The King's Gold, Alatriste #4)
2002, Con ánimo de ofender (With Intent to Offend, journalism 1998-2001)
2002, La reina del Sur (The Queen of the South)