Meneses in Skopelos. Fernando Schwartz
Patricio Meneses is a seriously atypical diplomat whom the government calls upon when it's necessary to resolve a mess that doesn't admit of official solutions, but rather mildly immoral, if not downright illegal, solutions. On this occasion, he has to recover three girls who have been kidnapped on the Greek island of Skopelos without anyone having yet demanded a ransom; they are the daughters of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, as well as an Olympic swimmer laden with gold medals. Meneses embarks on a frantic and dangerous search that takes him breathless from Greece to Siberia, with several stops in between, each more risky than the last. To do so, he has the help of a ruthless Russian colonel, his friend, and a lover from his youth, whom he calls Melina Mercouri and sometimes Desdemona.
More than 300 pages without a break and only a few literary and reflective pauses.
FERNANDO SCHWARTZ has had a life almost as eventful as that of his hero, Meneses. For 25 years, his diplomatic career took him from Costa Rica to London, then to New York and Kuwait, where he served as ambassador at a very young age. He also served as ambassador to the Netherlands until he grew tired of it and accepted an offer from the newspaper El País, where he worked as a columnist for six years. In 1994, he took over as host of a new television program, Lo+Plus, a highly successful daily magazine. Finally, in 2005, he retired to live and sail in Mallorca with his wife.
But what is most important to him is his literary career: more than 20 novels and essays. His first book was a historical essay, The Internationalization of the Spanish Civil War; with his second, The Gulf Conspiracy, he was a finalist for the 1992 Planeta Prize, which he later won in 1996 with The Misunderstanding. He also won the Primavera Prize with Vichy 1940, followed by several romantic and travel stories, the sequel to Vichy… with the epic poem La Nueve (Héroes de días atrás), and the first novel by Meneses, Que vaya Meneses.
