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Portrait of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán Photo: Andreu Dalmau / AP Photo/EFE /TT (2003)

Sample of authors

Vázquez Montalbán, Manuel

Spanish author, journalist, essayist and poet. Vázquez Montalbán was born in Barcelona the same year as General Franco came out of the civil war victorious. He belonged to that generation of Spaniards who did not get to know what it means to live in a democracy until their middle ages. Until his death in 1975, Franco ran a hard dictatorship with censorship and with capital punishment or i...

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Literary figures

Mma Makutsi

Gender: Female

She struggles with her poor skin and unflattering spectacles, but Mma Grace Makutsi has impressively high grades from her secretarial course and is a lady with skin on her nose and a sharp tongue. In Alexander McCall Smith’s suite of novels about The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Botswana’s capital Gaborone, Mma Makutsi is first employed, but after a while becomes a part-owner of the agency. S...

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