José Ovejero

José Ovejero (born 1958) is a Spanish writer. He was born in Madrid but has lived outside Spain for the greater part of his life. He has worked in a variety of genres, including poetry, drama, essays, short stories and novels. He won the 2013 Premio Alfaguara for his novel La invención del amor (Inventing Love).

Biography José Ovejero was born in 1958 in Madrid. He studied Geography and History at University in Spain and then moved to the Faculty of Egyptology in Bonn. In 1988 he moved to Brussels, where he worked as an interpreter for the EU until 2001. He now lives mainly in Madrid.

His first published work was a collection of narrative poems on Henry Morton Stanley. Since then he has published nine novels and as well short stories, essays and more poetry. He has also experimented with travel writing and drama.

Ovejero believes that “literature allows us to deconstruct the apparent order of reality, and from there you can construct new orders or create different unities.”

He has won several major literary prizes, including the 2013 Premio Alfaguara for his novel La invención del amor, translated into English as Inventing Love.

In 2018, José Ovejero presented three of his stories in a one-man stage show under the title ¡Qúe raros son los hombres! (Men Are So Strange!), touring theatres in Spain, Latin America, New York and various European cities - including London, as part of the Festival of Spanish Theatre (Festelón).