Manuel de Pedrolo

Manuel de Pedrolo i Molina (Catalan pronunciation: [mənuˈɛl də pəˈðɾɔlu]; 1918 – 1990) was a Catalan author of novels, short stories, poetry and plays. He is mostly known for his sci-fi novel Mecanoscrit del segon origen (Typescript of the Second Origin).

Manuel de Pedrolo was born in 1918 in L'Aranyó, in the Segarra comarca (county), in Catalonia. After the Spanish Civil War he settled in Barcelona, where he worked a variety of jobs while writing in his spare time. From 1974, he devoted himself entirely to literature, creating works, translating, and performing minor editorial tasks. He died in Barcelona in 1990 after a long illness.

Pedrolo explored all literary genres: poetry, theatre —classified within the Theatre of the Absurd, with Pedrolo's plays included in Martin Esslin's influential study (he is the only writer from the Iberian Peninsula featured in this study)—, narrative and short stories. His entire body of work, constituting one of the most extensive corpora in Catalan literature, is often overshadowed by the success of his most famous novel, Mecanoscrit del segon origen, the best-selling book in Catalan literature.

Additional information about his life and works can be found through the Pedrolo Foundation.