Belén Gopegui burst onto the Spanish literary scene in 1993, bowling over critics with her debut, La escala de los mapas [The Scale of Maps, City Lights, 2011], which was hailed as a masterpiece. She has since published six more novels, stories, young people's fiction, and screenplays, and several of her books have been adapted for cinema. This is her second translation into English. Gopegui was born, and lives in, Madrid, Spain.

Mark Schafer is an award-winning literary translator and visual artist, and a senior lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he teaches Spanish. He has translated works by authors from around the Spanish-speaking world, including David Huerta, Virgilio Piñera, Alberto Ruy Sánchez, and Belén Gopegui's La escala de los mapas [The Scale of Maps, City Lights, 2011]. Schafer is a founding member of the Boston Area Literary Translators Group. He lives in Roxbury, Massachusetts.