Carmen Balcells obituary

In the offices of Carmen Balcells, in the Diagonal business district of Barcelona, the conference room is lined with red box-files of final proofs. On their spines, the most famous names in late 20th-century Spanish and Latin American literature are picked out in gilt: Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar; the Barcelona novelists Juan and Luis Goytisolo, Juan Marsé and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán; and more recent writers such as Isabel Allende and Javier Cercas.

Balcells, who has died aged 85, represented all of these, and many more: 300 or so writers, including six Nobel prize-winners. She is often referred to as the driving force behind the Latin American explosion of literary talent in the 1960s, dubbed the Boom, and its associated style, magic realism.