Eva García Sáenz de Urturi Concludes 'The Saga of the Long-Lived'

Eva García Sáenz de Urturi (born in Vitoria, 1972) transitioned from self-publishing online to international bestseller lists. She returns to bookstores to conclude 'The Path of the Father' (Planeta), the trilogy of 'The Saga of the Long-Lived' that catapulted her to stardom. "The readers insisted, and here it is," says the 2020 Planeta Prize winner with 'Aquitania', who resumes and concludes the story of the Old Family. After starting this saga, now published in full for the first time, the author tackled the 'White City' series, translated into more than twenty languages. She has amassed four million readers across all her titles.

After more than a decade of waiting, readers will finally discover how the complex plot, intertwining intrigue, history, romance, and death, resolves, having entered their shelves in 2012. "I travelled to Norway, Ireland, New York, London, and Cantabria to complete it," the author explains.

"It was a closure I owed to the readers, and their insistence led us to republish the first and second parts and finally release this conclusion," the writer stated at a meeting in the Madrid restaurant Bancal, where chef Miguel F. Vidal crafted a menu inspired by the trilogy's narrative.

Five charred bodies appear alongside five cowrie shells after a brutal explosion at the New York clinic where Nagorno was operated on to save his life. Fearing the bodies belong to the Old Family, in revenge for the murder of Mother, the bloodthirsty matriarch of the Sons of Adam, Gunnarr decides to flee with Adriana to avoid becoming the next victims. Thus begins an original plot, with addictive intrigue blending murders, ancient history, and a love that endures through time.

The author denies it is "a fantasy novel" and insists it is "a book about family loyalties." "It's about grief, reunions, and everything we keep silent within the family. It speaks of poor communication; in many cases, it seems they haven't learned even after 100 years. Many traumas could have been resolved with a conversation. These are family stories, and that's what I wanted to capture," she assures.

"They are long-lived but not eternal," says Sáenz de Urturi of characters through whom she explores themes such as pain, friendship, loyalty to family, and love in all its forms. The members of the Old Family distinguish themselves from their enemies by how the millennia spent traversing the planet have only enhanced their humanity, far from dulling their feelings.

Trained as an optician and optometrist in Alicante, Sáenz de Urturi published her first novel, 'The Saga of the Long-Lived', in 2012, followed by the second installment, 'The Sons of Adam', and the historical novel 'Passage to Tahiti' in 2014. In 2016, she released 'The Silence of the White City', a thriller set in her hometown, translated into over twenty languages and featured on bestseller lists in the USA, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. Its film adaptation, made in 2019, is available on Netflix.

With 'The Silence of the White City', she began another trilogy, completed with 'The Water Rituals' and 'The Lords of Time'. Her accolades include the Book of the Year (2018) and The Golden Bullet for Best Foreign Crime Novel (2019). After winning the Planeta Prize in 2020 with 'Aquitania', she published 'The Black Book of Hours', the best-selling novel of 2022, and 'The Angel of the City' in 2023.