José María Guelbenzu, a writer, journalist, and critic born in Madrid in 1944, passed away on Friday at the age of 81 in the capital of Spain, as reported by ‘El País’, a publication he collaborated with.
He began his career at the magazine ‘Cuadernos para el diálogo’. In 1970, he joined Taurus and took on the role of editorial director seven years later, a position he held concurrently with the editorial direction of Alfaguara starting in 1982. In 1988, he resigned from both positions to focus entirely on literature.
A critic for the ‘Babelia’ supplement of ‘El País’ and a regular contributor to ‘Revista de libros’, Guelbenzu served as a judge for various literary awards, including the National Literature Prize and the Nadal Prize.
Throughout his career, he received accolades such as the Narrative Criticism Prize (1981), the Plaza & Janés International Novel Prize (1991), the Sánchez Ruipérez Foundation Journalism Prize (2007), and the Torrente Ballester Narrative Prize (2010). He authored a total of nineteen novels, six of which belong to the detective genre.
In a recent interview with Europa Press about his latest novel, ‘Una gota de afecto’, Guelbenzu expressed his opinion that as an editor, he would not have published the book ‘El odio’ by Luisgé Martín, in which José Bretón confesses to the murders of his two children Ruth and José, due to his lack of interest in the killer and his belief that the book is «bad».
«If I were the editor of that book, I wouldn’t have published it. Not for any specific reason, but because I think it’s bad. That’s the only issue (…) I don’t find it appealing, I have no interest in that killer, and I think it’s a bad book. That’s it. It’s a personal opinion,» explained Guelbenzu.
His latest novel, set in an old family crest-adorned mansion in a village in Cantabria, tells the story of a man «wounded» since his expulsion from the paradise of childhood, an international civil servant dedicated to aid projects in underdeveloped countries who chose to exert a blind sovereignty over reality.