The Author
Caixa de texto: José Rodrigues dos Santos is the bestselling novelist in Portugal. He is the author of four essays and seven novels, including Portuguese blockbusters Codex 632, which sold 189 000 copies, The God Formula, 169 000 copies, and The Seventh Seal, 180 000 copies. His overall sales are above one million books, astonishing figures considering Portugal’s tiny market. José’s fiction is published or is about to be published in 15 languages. His novel The Wrath of God won the 2009 Porto Literary Club Award and his other novel Codex 632 was longlisted for the 2010 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award His first novel, The Island of Darkness, is in the process of being adapted for cinema by one of Portugal’s leading film directors, Leonel Vieira. José is also a journalist and a university lecturer. He works for Portuguese public television, where he presents RTP’s Evening News. As a reporter he has covered wars around the globe, including Angola, East Timor, South Africa, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, Bosnia, Serbia, Lebanon and Georgia. He has been awarded three times by CNN for his reporting and twice by the Portuguese Press Club. José teaches journalism at Lisbon’s New University and has a Ph. D. on war reporting. His latest novel, The Wrath of God, has just been released and has already sold 165 000 copies, becoming the n.º1 bestselling book of 2009 in Portugal. This book, winner of the 2009 Porto Literary Club Award, deals with two questions: what if Al-Qaeda has the atomic bomb, and what if radical Islam is true Islam? Here we see historian Tomás Noronha joining forces with the CIA to hunt Al-Qaeda, and simultaneously we follow the life of Ahmed, an Egyptian boy torn between a mullah who teaches him the tolerant and peaceful nature of Islam, and a teacher at the madrassa who shows him a different, aggressive Islam. The Wrath of God was reviewed by a former Al-Qaeda operative, the man who carried out Bin Laden’s first attack in Europe. Click here for an extended bio.