Ana María Matute (Barcelona, 1925–2014)writer and academic, lived a childhood and youth marked by the Spanish civil war. It was a highly awarded author and popular, a precocious reader who at the age of five was already inventing her own stories.
She was the third academician of the RAE in almost three centuries. In his 1998 entrance speech, for chair K, he highlighted the mystery and wisdom of words, his great literary obsession since childhood.
In that speech, Matute described his literary world as «the forest that is for me the world of imagination, fantasy, dreaming, but also of literature itself and, ultimately, of the word.»
Ten years later, in 2008, Matute recovered these memories in an interview for Cadena SER, on the occasion of his book «Paraíso Inhabitado.» He talked about objects that come to life, loneliness and childhood experiences.
With «Uninhabited Paradise», Matute broke a long literary silencepouring out «a lot of ideas» after an illness. He assured that he would no longer write for children, but he left a final message about the importance of reading at any age.
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