Berna González Harbour

Berna González Harbour combines her work as a journalist with literary writing. As a journalist she has worked in different branches of the media, including the newspapers El Sol and El Periódico de Catalunya, and she is presently a columnist for El País in the Culture and Opinion sections. She also works in radio, with the “Hoy por Hoy” programme of SER, as well as writing as a literary critic for such publications as Babelia, of which she was editor, and Zenda. She was also deputy editor of El País and special envoy to several conflict zones. In 2019, she received the Estrañi Award from the Journalists Association of Cantabria her work as a journalist.

As a writer, she specialises in the crime novel and has brought into being the character of police commissioner María Ruiz in a series of four novels: Verano en rojo (Summer in Red, RBA, 2012), Margen de error (Margin of Error, RBA, 2014), Las lágrimas de Claire Jones (The Tears of Claire Jones, Ediciones Destino, 2017) and El sueño de la razón (The Sleep of Reason, Ediciones Destino, 2019), which won the Dashiell Hammett Prize for the Crime Novel. She is also author of El pozo (The Well, Ediciones Destino, 2021) and Goya en el país de los garrotazos (Goya in the Land of Blows, Arpa, 2021), a biography of Francisco de Goya. In 2022, she received the Eighth Granada Noir Award for her literary career.