Luz Gabás

Luz Gabás is a Spanish novelist and translator born in 1968 in Graus, Huesca. She began her career as a translator and academic before publishing her debut novel Palmeras en la nieve (Palm Trees in the Snow, 2012), which became one of the most successful Spanish debut novels of recent decades, selling more than a million copies and being adapted into a major film. Palmeras en la nieve is a multigenerational epic set between the rural Pyrenees of Aragón and the tropical island of Bioko (formerly Fernando Poo) in Equatorial Guinea, spanning the colonial period and the present. The novel drew on Gabás's family history and her deep research into Spanish colonial Africa. Lejos de Luisiana (Far from Louisiana), her 2022 Premio Planeta winner, is another sweeping historical novel, this time set in 18th-century Louisiana during the Spanish colonial period. The novel follows a Spanish family caught up in the political upheavals of the territory's passage between French and American control. Gabás is one of the most successful Spanish historical novelists of her generation, known for her meticulous research, her sweeping narratives, and her ability to recover neglected chapters of Spanish colonial history.