Biography

Author Photo- Dominic Martell

Who is Dominic Martell?


Dominic Martell was born into an academic family in the midwestern
United States, but he has spent much of his life abroad. As a child he
lived in Indonesia and Canada and as a teenager spent a highly
educational summer in Colombia. A university year in Barcelona kindled
an interest in Spain and the Mediterranean region in general. Armed with
a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, he set out to see the world,
supporting his travel habit by teaching English as a second language. He
learned French while working illegally in France and Arabic through
personal study and extensive travel in North Africa and the Middle East.
Having acquired a wife and two children, he left teaching to write
novels and develop a second career as a translator.

Under the name Sam Reaves he has published nine crime novels set in the United States and co-authored a mobster memoir. In 2010 his translation of Iraqi novelist Mahmoud Saeed’s novel The World Through the Eyes of Angels was awarded the King Fahd prize for best literary translation from Arabic to English.

The first three novels featuring repentant ex-terrorist Pascual
March appeared in the 1990s, chronicling Pascual’s quest for atonement
in the chaotic early years of the post Cold-War period. A quarter of a
century later, in the transformed landscape of the even more chaotic
post-9/11 digitally connected world, Martell began to wonder what had
become of Pascual and decided to bring him out of retirement.