Biography
Manuel Rivas is Galicia’s most international writer. Thirteen books have appeared in English: seven novels, three poetry collections and three books of short stories (one a film tie-in, Butterfly’s Tongue). His novel The Carpenter’s Pencil, which has also been made into a film, is the most widely translated work of Galician literature and has been translated into thirty languages. Other stand-out titles are the epic Books Burn Badly and the autobiographical novel The Low Voices. With his book of short stories Vermeer’s Milkmaid & Other Stories, he won the Spanish National Book Award in 1996. He works as a journalist and is a regular contributor to El País.
Synopsis
One Million Cows (104 pages) is a book of eighteen short stories which won the Spanish Critics’ Prize in 1989. It is considered a foundational work with an important influence on the direction taken by modern Galician literature.
Sample
Gaby, Gabriela, is older than me. I think she’s a lot older. Two years, at least. After such a long time, I wasn’t expecting to find her in the village, in Aita, but there she was, sitting languidly on the Brandarices’ stone bench, in between two geranium pots.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘How are things?’
‘Good. And you?’
‘Good. Excellent. Actually, terrible.’
In reality, she was a lot older than me. Three years, perhaps.
Portico of Galician Literature 