Biography
Xesús Fraga was born in London, but later moved to Coruña and Betanzos. He is one of only four Galician-language writers to have won the Spanish National Book Award for Fiction, which he received for his novel Virtues (and Mysteries) (2020). A graduate in journalism from Salamanca University, he has worked for the newspaper La Voz de Galicia in the sections “Galicia” and “Culture”. He writes both adult and young adult fiction. Virtues (and Mysteries) also received the Blanco Amor and the Galician Critics’ Awards. Other titles include Tute for Four (2000), A-Z (2003) and Solimán (2004). His two YA titles, The White Elephant (2013) and Reo (2015), received the Sarmiento and the Queen Lupa Awards respectively and deal with the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Fraga has translated important works into Galician, including The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
Synopsis
Virtues (and Mysteries) (368 pages) is Xesús Fraga’s fourth work of adult fiction and won the Spanish National Book Award in 2021, as well as the Blanco Amor and Galician Critics’ Awards. Xesús Fraga is only the fourth Galician writer to win the Spanish National Book Award in the category of fiction.
Sample
Anytime my grandmother got angry, her eyes would flash with a feral gleam, and she would clench her teeth in a grim rictus, lips pursed, jaw quaking. She reminded me, in these moments, of a bulldog sniffing your slightest weakness, your slightest misstep. She would crouch into a squat and eye you from this low vantage which, rather than undermine her authority, was a clear sign she was primed to attack. When my grandmother got angry with me specifically, it was almost always because I’d either questioned her infallible opinions, or because some problem had arisen which (according to her) was my fault, but which (from my perspective) was purely a misunderstanding. She didn’t care what I had to say, batting away my defences with an unmatchable argument:
“Estás wrong!”
Portico of Galician Literature 