Benjamín Labatut was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 1980. He spent his childhood in The Hague and at the age of fourteen he settled in Santiago, Chile. La Antártica begins here, his first book of stories, won the Caza de Letras Prize and the Santiago Municipal Prize. His second book, After the Light, consists of a series of scientific, philosophical and historical notes on the void, written after a profound personal crisis.

In Anagrama he has published Un verdor terrible: «Extraordinary... Ingenious, complex and deeply disturbing» (John Banville); «A disconcerting journey into the delusions of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century» (Jaime G. Mora, ABC); The stone of madness: «Examine the limits of common sense and chaos in this book that pursues the traces of unreason through literature, the images that art has left us and the various scientific theories that are used in the history» (La Razón); and MANIAC: «Monstrously good. “It reads like a dark foundational myth about modern technology, but with the pace of a thriller” (Mark Haddon). Un verdor terrible has become a publishing phenomenon: translated into 32 languages, it won the Galileo Prize and the Santiago Municipal Prize, and was a finalist for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Photography © Juana Gómez