Translation Rights TQE / The Ages of Lulu

Las edades de Lulú (The Ages of Lulu), awarded the XI La Sonrisa Vertical Prize in 1989, is a long and complex love story. Lulú, a fifteen year-old girl, succumbs to the attraction of a friend of the family. After this first experience, Lulú, an eternal little girl, feeds for years the ghost of the man who later bursts definitely into her life and accepts the challenge of prolonging their peculiar sexual relationship, the loving play of childhood. He creates a private universe for her, a world where time has no meaning. But the risky sorcery of living outside reality is broken when Lulú, now thirty years old, rushes towards a world of dangerous and forbidden desires. Almudena Grandes situates this subversive history of love in her native town since, according to her, erotism is more corrosive if it takes place in a daily and familiar setting.

Rarely in the genre of erotic narrative has a woman been able to penetrate with such wittiness, hardness, and tenderness into the desires and inclinations of her sex. This novel was splendidly received not only by the critics and foreign publishers, but also by the public. Fifteen days after its publication, the rights were sold for a Spanish film directed by Bigas Luna. The most important critics of the countries where it has been translated have acknowledged her undoutable literary quality.

Almudena Grandes was born in Madrid in 1960. She became widely recognized as a writer in 1989 with her novel Las edades de Lulú, which won the XI Sonrisa Vertical Prize. She has been accompanied by the acclaim of readers and critics ever since. She’s the author of ten novels and two books of short stories that have confirmed her as one of the most solid and internationally-known narrators in recent Spanish literature. Many of her works have been taken to the big screen, and her novel, El corazón helado, one of the most acclaimed and long-lasting successes in current Spanish literature, has received, among other awards, the Fundación Lara Prize, the prizes of the booksellers in Madrid and Seville, the Rapallo Carige in Italy and the Prix Méditerranée in France. Her previous novel Inés y la alegría was awarded the Critic’s Prize in Madrid 2011 and the Elena Poniatowska Prize 2011 and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize 2011, both in Mexico.