Teresa Solana was born in Barcelona in 1962. A philosopher by training and a fan of the Classical world, she tried her hand at various lines of employment (from check-out operator in a big department store to parliamentary assistant) before embracing literary translation. She directed the National Translation Centre in Spain for seven years and now devotes her time to writing her own novels and translating them into Spanish. She advocates the therapeutic qualities of humour, and her novels are a blend of merciless satire and detective thriller. A Not So Perfect Crime , her first novel, won the 2007 Brigada 21 Prize for best noir in Catalan and A Shortcut to Paradise, her second, was short-listed for the 2008 Salambó Prize for best novel in Catalan. She is translated into several languages (portrait credit: Pere Virgili). Teresa now lives in Oxford with her husband and translator Peter Bush and their daughter.
