Biography
Santiago Lopo is a highly successful writer in the Galician language. Having studied Translation and Interpreting at Vigo University and taught French at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas in Pontevedra, he has published six novels and a book of short stories (The Nereids’ Voice, 2016). Of his novels, Game Over (2007) won the La Voz de Galicia Award for a novel in instalments, Zulu Time (2012) the García Barros, The Madmen’s Diagonal (2014) the Repsol, The Art of Making Verses (2017) the Xerais, and The Postwoman (2021) the Losada Diéguez. As well as translating screenplays from English, he has translated two works by the French writer Hervé Guibert into Galician: My Manservant and Me and Cytomegalovirus.
Synopsis
The Art of Making Verses (224 pages) is Santiago Lopo’s fifth novel and earned him the Xerais Prize for novels in 2017. More than 10,000 copies of the Galician edition have been printed.
Sample
The falcon abandoned the cliff and took flight at great speed, taking advantage of the Pyrenean wind. Propelled by icy gusts foretelling autumn, its nervous eyes captured images of what was going on down below, on the earth. First the mountains, then the valley, the fields, and finally the wall. As it approached the town, it beat its wings forcefully, accelerated and gained height.
It hovered near the clouds and watched the traffic of people in the streets. It was market day. The red awnings of the itinerant stalls swelled with air, sometimes becoming loose and momentarily revealing the products on offer: baskets with spices, Flemish cloths, pork chops, barrels of Navarrese and Aquitanian wine… The sun came out, and the falcon climbed even higher, startled by the glint of weapons and helmets being sold by veterans of the crusades. It understood the danger of that gleam, but it was hungry and needed to run the risk of approaching that large human gathering.
Portico of Galician Literature 