José Ángel Mañanas (Madrid, 1971), an author known for writing what is usually called urban fiction, has published six novels about the history of Spain since 2019, but he says that he is doing well. Mañas also says that the best of these novels are Pathfinders (the title that started the cycle) and the recently published Eggplant (The Sphere of Books). «And here I write as well as I can. I really think about it. I don’t think I can give more than this, at least in a historical novel… All of us in Spain have gone through an identity flu during the last decade, and each one overcame it as best they could. I have made my historical books. It’s okay, I have greatly expanded my perception of reality, I understand things that I didn’t even take seriously before. But I’ve already passed it, I’m already on to something else, in writing science fiction or whatever. My luck, good and bad, is that I received attention when I didn’t know anything about writing novels. And now that I know, I have just enough success to be able to write the next one. “I’m not complaining, there’s no need for more.”
They are Eggplant tells the life of Berenguela I, daughter of the king of Castile and consort of the king of León and mother of the first king of Castile and León. «She is the most important queen in the history of Spain, as much or more than Isabel I, and no one knows her.I would have called the Princess of Asturias Berenguela», says Mañas. His value, in short, was that he maneuvered intelligently and ensured that Castile had primacy in the unification and expansion of the Christian kingdoms of ancient Hispania.