Fernando Arrabal Terán (born August 11, 1932 in Melilla, Spain) is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet of Spanish origin. He settled in France in 1955. He learned to read and write in the city of Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca, Spain, where at the age of ten he was awarded a National Prize for “Gifted Children.” He went to university in Madrid. His father, an army officer, was sentenced to death at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War for being opposed to the right-wing military coup led by General Francisco Franco. His sentence was commuted to hard labor for life. He was transferred to different jails, escaped from the last one on November 4, 1941 and vanished forever. In his childhood, Arrabal suffered from his father’s mysterious disappearance. Because of this trauma, as the Nobel Prize-winning poet Vicente Aleixandre (1898-1984) wrote, ‘’The knowledge which Arrabal conveys is tinged with a moral light which is innate in the very substance of his artistry.’’ Arrabal has directed seven full-length feature films. He has published over one-hundred plays, fourteen novels, seven poetry collections, many essays, and his celebrated “Letter to General Franco” during the dictator’s lifetime. His complete plays have been published in a number of languages, in France by Les Éditions Christian Bourgois and Actes Sud; in Spain the complete plays have appeared in two volumes, a total of over two thousand pages, in the series Colección Clásicos Castellanos of Editorial Espasa Calpe. (via Wikipedia)