After school, she began working as a journalist, and in 1976, she began working at
El País. In 1977, she began publishing interviews in the Sunday edition of the paper, and the following year, she won the "Manuel del Arco" prize for her work and was the first woman to receive it. She also published her first novel in 1979,
Crónica del desamor (Chronicle of Enmity). In 1980, she won the National Journalism Prize for her articles and literary reports, and that year, she was named editor-in-chief of
El País Semanal. In 1981 she published
La función Delta (The Delta Function), and the following year, a collection of her interviews previously published in
El País was released, with the title "Cinco años de país" (Five Years of
El País). The novel
Te trataré como una reina (I Will Treat You Like a Queen) followed in 1983 and was a commercial success. She was awarded the World Prize for interviews in 1987 and published
Temblor (Tremor) in 1990. Her first children's story,
El nido de los sueños (The Nest of Dreams), was published in 1992, and in the following years, she released
Bella y Oscura (Beautiful and Dark, 1993) and
La Vida desnuda (The Naked Life, 1994). In 1994 she was awarded the Journalism Prize, and in 1997 she received the Spring Novel Prize for her work
La hija del caníbal (The Cannibal's Daughter). In 1999, she published
Pasiones (Passions), and in 2002,
Estampas bostonianas y otros viajes. In 2003, she published what she considers one of her best works,
La Loca de la Casa (The Lunatic of the House). This book won the
Qué Leer Prize for the best book published in Spain in 2003, and the
Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign book published in Italy in 2004. In 2005 she published
Historia del Rey Transparente (Story of the Transparent King), which also won the
Qué Leer Prize as the best book published in Spain in 2005. Her short story
El Abuelo (The Grandfather) was included in
Rainy Days - Días de lluvia: Short Stories by Contemporary Spanish Women Writers, an anthology edited by Montserrat Lunati, together with a translation into English. ==Selected works==