Miguel Delibes

Miguel Delibes , 1920–2010, Spanish novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, b. Valladolid. Prolific and widely translated, he is known for his descriptions of provincial and rural life in the Castilian countryside and for his psychological analysis of middle- and lower-class characters. Among his works are La sombra del ciprés es alargada [the cypress casts a long shadow] (1947), El loco (1953), Diario de un cazador [diary of a hunter] (1955), Las ratas (1962, tr. Smoke on the Ground, 1972), Cinco horas con Mario (1966, tr. Five Hours with Mario, 1988), Las guerras de nuestros antepasados (1975, tr. The Wars of Our Ancestors, 1992), 377A, madera de héroe (1987, tr. The Stuff of Heroes, 1990), Diario de un jubilado [diary of a pensioner] (1995), and El hereje (1998, tr. The Heretic, 2006). He was awarded Spain's highest literary honor, the Cervantes Prize, in 1994.

Bibliography: See studies by J. W. Diaz (1971), Y. B. Agawu-Kakraba (1996), and T. C. Boucher (2004); critical bibliography by G. G. Meyers (1999).