Juan Gómez-Jurado
Juan Gómez-Jurado (Born 16 December 1977 in Madrid, Spain) is an award-winning Spanish journalist and bestselling author. Currently, he is a columnist in "La Voz de Galicia," and "ABC", distributed in Spain, and he participates in several radio and TV programs. Translated into 42 languages, Gómez-Jurado is one of the most successful contemporary Spanish authors of all time along with New York Times bestselling authors Javier Sierra and Carlos Ruiz Zafón. His writing has been widely described by critics as "energetic and cinematographic".[1][2]
Gómez-Jurado worked in many the most important Spanish media, like 40 Principales, Cadena Ser, Cadena Cope, Radio España, Canal + and ABC, before hitting the bestseller lists throughout the world with God's Spy (Espía de Dios), his first novel. An instant bestseller in Spain, with rights sold in 42 countries to date and more than a million copies sold, God’s Spy is a contemporary thriller set in the Vatican, where, in the aftermath of Pope John Paul II’s death, the hunt for a serial killer reveals a chilling conspiracy.
On 27 September 2008, Gómez-Jurado won the prestigious Premio de Novela Ciudad de Torrevieja for his latest novel The Traitor's Emblem. The plot is set in Germany after the First World War, a thriller that begins one night in 1941 aboard a patrol Spanish ship at the Gibraltar Strait, where Captain González ends rescuing the only survivors from a shipwreck whom he manages to take to the coast of Portugal. The shipwrecked Germans, as a token of their gratitude, present Captain González with a gold emblem, and two words the German leader of the rescued lot will remember for all his life and throughout the novel: "treason" and "salvation". This novel is being translated into 40 languages and will be published in July 2011 in the USA. Kirkus Reviews praised "The traitor's emblem": "riveting thriller with a redeeming love story".[3]
Books and literature
- The Traitor's Emblem (Atria, 2011). Munich, 1919. After his family fall into disgrace, 15-year-old Paul Reiner and his mother work as servants in the palace of Baron Von Schroeder. Unhappy and full of despair, Paul dreams of the heroic father he never knew. But one night, seconds before committing suicide, Paul's cousin reveals a terrible secret. Paul's father didn't die in the First World War, as he had always been told. He was killed by someone very close to him, and for unclear reasons. This discovery turns Paul's world upside down and from that moment, Paul sacrifices everything to discover the truth behind his father's death, even his love for Alys Tannenbaum, a Jewish photographer who helps him on his dangerous pursuit. Together they fight for their love, the truth behind Paul's family and the vengeance of Paul's cousin who rises to become a high-ranking Nazi and on Hitler's orders and successfully infiltrates the Mason organization to root out their Jewish members.
- The Moses Expedition (Atria, 2010) A lost treasure, a Nazi war criminal, and a lifelong quest to find a missing heirloom are the starting points for this novel in which Gomez-Jurado uses the thriller genre to portray the brutal face of prejudice, racism, and bigotry, deftly showing how humans create enemies. A mysterious CIA operative and member of the Vatican's secret service pays a visit to a war criminal living under a pseudonym because of the terrible experiments he performed on Jewish children. The operative offers him a deal—he will not reveal the man's true identity in exchange for a huge candle covered in fine filigree gold. But it is not the gold the agent is after—it is the metallic object preserved within the wax, a missing fragment of an ancient map. Soon the reader is involved in an expedition to Jordan set up by the enigmatic head of Kayn industries, a reclusive billionaire who has links to the highest levels of the Catholic Church. But there is a traitor in the group who has links to terrorist organisations back in the US, and who is patiently awaiting the moment to strike. From wartime Vienna to terrorist cells in New York and a lost valley in Jordan, The Moses Expedition is about a quest for power and the secrets of an ancient world.
- God's Spy (Dutton, 2007), English translation of Espía de Dios by James Graham. The novel takes place in the days following the death of Pope John Paul II, when 115 cardinals have to be called to the Vatican in order to take part in the Conclave to elect the new Pope. With Rome under siege to foreign press and thousands of mourners, the last thing it needs is a serial killer on the loose. Paola Dicanti is a profiler who works with the Italian police—she has been put in charge of profiling serial killers in a department of one i.e. herself. She is untested and her experience of serial killers is, as yet, theoretical. This is until she is called to the church of Santa Maria in the Vatican state. A cardinal has been found murdered, his eyes destroyed, his hands cut off. It seems that this is not the first victim—another cardinal was found in similar circumstances but the authorities did not want a scandal. Recovering from a bitter affair with her boss, Paola begins to build her profile using information from the scene of the crime, from the autopsy, and from forensic evidence. She is helped in this by Anthony Fowler, a priest from the States. But it turns out that Fowler is no ordinary priest—he clearly has links to the CIA, and knows a lot about the serial killer than Dicanti could ever have guessed. The situation is complicated further when a young female journalist intercepts tapes that were meant to be sent to the press, putting her life in danger.
- La Masacre de Virginia Tech: Anatomía de una mente torturada (El Andén, 2007): On 15 July 2007, Gómez-Jurado was in the United States at the time of the Virginia Tech shooting and traveled to Blacksburg to compile his experiences in a text for publication initially in a Spanish newspaper. When the newspaper rejected his text for being excessively long even for a serial publication, Gómez-Jurado decided to publish it in book form “so that the voices, the suffering of the victims, were not limited a list and a number”.
- Identidad Secreta (Lago Ediciones, 2007), an anthology of his columns on International Affairs.
- Otras voces (Alfaguara, 1996), an anthology of short stories.
Controversy and media reaction
There were several very controversial issues in Spain relating to God's Spy. The main reason is that the antagonist, Viktor Karoski, is a serial killer, pedophile priest. In the book there is a highly detailed portrait of Saint Matthew's Institute, a carbon copy of a real institution in the United States (Maryland based, as well) dedicated to the rehabilitation of sex-offender priests. Some catholic organizations in Spain and Poland protested against the novel because of this. In both countries, nonetheless, the main reaction of the critics was fairly favourable to the novel. In the USA the reviews were positive. Booklist, i. e., praised the book as a "First-rate thriller".
Personal life and Philantropy
Juan Gómez-Jurado is married and lives in Madrid, Spain, with his wife and two children. After his wife being diagnosed with cancer, Gómez-Jurado became an activist to fighting colon cancer. He is also an ambassador of Save The Children. He led campaigns as "1 libro 1 euro", a website in which Internet users can download books in exchange of a voluntary donation to Save the Children.
List of works
- Espía de Dios ("God's Spy", a novel), Roca Editorial, 2006, Spain. (Translated to English, Danish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Italian, German, Serbian Dutch and Finnish.
- La masacre de Virginia Tech ("The Virginia Tech Massacre", a chronicle), El Anden, 2007, Spain.
- Contrato con Dios ("Contract with God", a novel), El Anden, 2007, Spain.
- El emblema del traidor, Plaza & Janés, 2008, Spain. Winner of the 2008 Premio de Novela Ciudad de Torrevieja.
Awards and nominations
External links
References
- ^ Booklist review of God's Spy
- ^ Bookreporter review of God's Spy
- ^ Kirkus Reviews on The Traitor's Emblem
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Gomez-Jurado, Juan |
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| Date of birth |
16 December 1977 |
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Madrid, Spain |
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