Felix Azua

(Barcelona, 1944)

Writer, academic of the Royal Spanish Academy (letter H). Doctor in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona, he was a professor of Aesthetics at the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. Previously, he had taught classes at the Faculty of Philosophy of Zorroaga (San Sebastián), dependent on the University of the Basque Country. Between 1993 and 1995 he directed the Cervantes Institute in Paris. De Azúa was one of the members of the anthology Nine Newest Spanish Poets (1970), by José María Castellet, along with Pere Gimferrer, Guillermo Carnero and Leopoldo María Panero. He has published the poetry books Cepo para nutria (1968); The veil on the face of Agamemnon (1966-1969) (1970); Edgar in Stéphane (1971); Tongue of Lime (1972); Pass and seven songs (1977), and Farra (1983). His poetic work is collected, until 2007, in Última sangre (Poetry 1968-2007) (2007), which collects the previous books and incorporates the series of seven poems that gives the volume its title. Regarding his narrative production, which "stands out for its reflective and culturalist character, with strong doses of irony and sarcasm", the novels The Lessons of Jena (1972) have appeared; Three didactic stories (1975); Last lesson (1981); Mansura (1984), republished in 2015 by Reino de Redonda, Javier Marías' publishing house; Story of an idiot told by himself (1986); Diario de un hombre humiliado (1987), which won the V Herralde Novel Prize; Flag change (1991); Too Many Questions (1994); Decisive Moments (2000); Lifeless Autobiography (2010); Paper Autobiography (2013), Caballero Bonald International Essay Prize, and Génesis (2015). Author, likewise, of a wide essayistic work, among which The Paradox of the Primitive (1983) stands out; Learning from disappointment (1989); The Venencia of Casanova (1990); Departures of tone (1997); Compulsive readings (1998); Baudelaire (and the artist of modern life) (1999); The Invention of Cain (1999); Dictionary of the Arts (2002); Short Circuits (2004); Splendor and nothing (2006); Open at all hours (2007); Black Sheep (2007); The Domesticated Passion (2007), and Against Jeremías (2013). De Azúa has translated works by Samuel Beckett from French—Residua (1981); Without. Followed by "The Depopulator" (1984); Primer amor (1984), and Relatos (1997), the latter in collaboration with Ana María Moix and Manuel Talens—and Novelas (1979), by Denis Diderot. Regular contributor to the press, mainly in the newspaper El País, for one of the articles published in this newspaper in 2011, "Against Jeremías", he won the González-Ruano Prize for Journalism. In November 2015, the kings of Spain presented him with the Francisco Cerecedo Journalism Prize, awarded by the Association of European Journalists. In May 2016, Relatos appeared, a volume that compiles his short story work, and in February 2017, Nuevas compulsivas readings, a volume that compiles his essays on great writers. The work was presented in Madrid on March 8. In February 2019 he published Volver la mira, a work that brings together all the essays on architecture and art that he has written in the last twenty years. In October 2020 he published his work Third Act, "a generational portrait from Franco's Catalonia to the apparent modernization of Spain."