Prehistory is all around us. We just need to know where to look. Juan José Millás has always felt like he doesn’t quite fit into human society. Sometimes he wonders if he is even a Homo sapiens at all, or something simpler. Perhaps he is a Neanderthal who somehow survived? So he turns to Juan Luis Arsuaga, one of the world’s leading palaeontologists and a super-smart sapiens, to explain why we are the way we are and where we come from. Over the course of many months, the two visit different places, many of them common scenes of our daily lives, and others unique archaeological sites. Arsuaga tries to teach the Neanderthal how to think like a sapiens and, above all, that prehistory is not a thing of the past: that traces of humanity through the millennia can be found anywhere, from a cave or a landscape to a children’s playground or a toy shop. Millás and Arsuaga invite you on a journey of wonder which unites scientific discovery with the greatest human invention of all: the art of storytelling.
Author
Juan José Millás is a Spanish writer and winner of the 1990 Premio Nadal. He was born in Valencia and has spent most of his life in Madrid where he studied Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Complutense. His first novel was influenced by Julio Cortázar and consequently shows the influence of the then-prevalent literary experimentalism, as well as the uncertainty of a fledgling author. Although very original, his second book, Cerbero son las sombras (1975), obtained the Premio Sésamo and received a positive critical response. Thanks to an enthusiastic member of the judges panel for the Premio Sésamo, Juan García Hortelano, he was able to publish Visión del ahogado (1977) and El jardín vacío (The empty garden) (1981) with the prestigious publisher Alfaguara. But his most popular novel was Papel mojado (1983), an assignment for a publisher of young adult literature that was a commercial success and continues to sell well. Simultaneously, he began to publish articles in the Spanish press with great success, so he left the employment of the Iberian press and now makes a living as a journalist and author. In his numerous works, which are mostly psychological and introspective, any daily fact can become a fantastic event. He created his own personal literary genre, the articuento, in which an everyday story is transformed into a fantasy that allows the reader to see reality more critically. His weekly columns in El País have generated a great number of followers who appreciate the subtlety and originality of his point of view in dealing with current events, as well as his commitment to social justice and the quality of his writing. On the program La Ventana, on the channel Ser, he has a time slot (Fridays at 4:00) in which he encourages viewers to send short accounts about words from the dictionary. Currently, he is constructing a glossary, within which these accounts have a large role. His works have been translated into 23 languages, among them: English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch. In his 2006 novel, titled Laura y Julio, we find his principal obsessions expressed: the problem of identity, symmetry, other inhabitable spaces within our space, love, fidelity, and jealousy.
