Born in the ancient roman port today known as Cartagena in the province
of Murcia, Spain, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, today the best-selling author
in Spain and the best-selling Spanish author in the world, studied
Political Sciences and Journalism. He started working as a reporter for
the Madrid newspaper "Pueblo" and was twice reported missing -- first
in the Sahara in 1975 and two years later in Eritrea. He also reported
on the Falkland Isles war in 1982. From there he moved to RTVE as war
correspondent and covered bellicose events in Cyprus, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Chad, Lebanon, Sudan, Mozambique, Angola, Persian Gulf,
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is on his experiences in this last
mentioned that his book "Territorio Comanche" is based and which ired
RTVE directors, causing Pérez-Reverte to quit. He has since then
dedicated himself exclusively to writing and has to date produced about
16 novels, hundreds of articles in magazines, most notably "Semanal TV"
and appeared on radio and TV interview shows. He frequently appears at
seminars, congresses and book fairs and has received numerous
journalist awards from radio, TV and newspapers. He lives in a village
outside Madrid with his wife and daughter Carlota. Indeed, his daughter
was in great part responsible for the first part of the "Alatriste"
novels as she carried out quite a lot of the work of investigating
historical documents relating to 17th Century Madrid. His novels have
the common thread of being based on real historical times and that in
each case a great deal of investigation goes into the making of his
stories, as well as the fact that he has had to learn a great deal on
topics ranging from chess-playing to historical first-editions, from
16th Century Dutch masters to Informatics and even swordsmanship. His
extraordinary imaginative abilities have been able to produce
well-written adventure stories. But for Arturo Pérez-Reverte, who has
his own yacht which is his great passion, "true freedom starts ten
miles out to sea."
