Virtues and mysteries of migrant lives: from rural Galicia to Swinging London (and back) by Galician award-winning writer and translator Xesús Fraga

6 Oct 2022

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.