Miranda France

Miranda France’s writing encompasses fiction, non-fiction and reportage; she also translates from Spanish. Her first book was commissioned after she won the Shiva Naipaul award for travel writing in The Spectator, having spent three years working as a journalist in South America. Bad Times in Buenos Aires (Weidenfeld, 1998) describes the experience of living in Argentina, a country deeply marked by the ‘dirty war’ waged by the state on its citizens in the 1970s. It was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook award and has been used as teaching material in schools. Don Quixote’s Delusions: travels in Castilian Spain (Weidenfeld. 2001) is a different kind of inquiry, examining modern Spain and the legacy of its greatest genius, Miguel de Cervantes, author of the first modern novel.

Miranda France likes to blend humour with observation in unexpected and beguiling ways. In 2011 she published her first novel That Summer at Hill Farm (Vintage) and she is working on a second. She has written for publications including the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator, the New Statesman and the Literary Review. She teaches for the Arvon Foundation and is a member of English Pen’s writers-in-translation committee. Translating is an important second love. Projects include short stories by Liliana Heker for Yale University Press and Claudia Piñeiro’s Thursday Night Widows (Bitter Lemon, 2009), which was shortlisted for the Independent foreign fiction prize. Miranda France works from a cluttered office in the London home she shares with Carl Honoré and their two children.