Núria Cadenes

Núria Cadenes (Barcelona, 1970) is a writer, has worked as a bookseller in Valencia (where she helped launch Fan Set, the successor to the historic Tres i Quatre), and also works as a journalist.

Her literary voice is characterised by the hybridisation of genres, a high level of linguistic rigour, and thematic ambition.

Her novels include El banquer (2013), in which she fictionalised the life of Joan March; two works that combine crime fiction and social criticism, Tota la veritat (2016), which won the Crims de Tinta Award, and Secundaris (2018), which explores the other side of Olympic Barcelona; and Guillem (2020), a documentary novel about the murder of the young anti-fascist Guillem Agulló, which was met with great acclaim (València Negra Award 2020 and Lletra d’Or Award 2021) and has become a bestseller.

Her two most recent novels have represented a significant step forward. Tiberi Cèsar (2023) is a powerful and intimate narrative mosaic about Rome’s second emperor and his times and, above all, a declaration of love for the culture of classical Rome. And in Qui salva una vida (2025), winner of the 2025 Proa Prize and acclaimed by both readers and critics, Cadenes takes another step forward in her literary career with a polyphonic novel that gives voice and life to a diverse group of real men and women who, during the Second World War, created an escape network to help Jews and Allied airmen cross the Pyrenees from Cerdanya.

She has also written collections of short stories and has also contributed in to several anthologies.

When she was a child and someone asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would answer without hesitation: “A farmer and a writer.” The first part still seems a long way off, but there is time yet.