Born in the ancient roman port today known as Cartagena in the province of Murcia, Spain, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, today the best-selling author in Spain and the best-selling Spanish author in the world, studied Political Sciences and Journalism. He started working as a reporter for the Madrid newspaper "Pueblo" and was twice reported missing -- first in the Sahara in 1975 and two years later in Eritrea. He also reported on the Falkland Isles war in 1982. From there he moved to RTVE as war correspondent and covered bellicose events in Cyprus, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chad, Lebanon, Sudan, Mozambique, Angola, Persian Gulf, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is on his experiences in this last mentioned that his book "Territorio Comanche" is based and which ired RTVE directors, causing Pérez-Reverte to quit. He has since then dedicated himself exclusively to writing and has to date produced about 16 novels, hundreds of articles in magazines, most notably "Semanal TV" and appeared on radio and TV interview shows. He frequently appears at seminars, congresses and book fairs and has received numerous journalist awards from radio, TV and newspapers. He lives in a village outside Madrid with his wife and daughter Carlota. Indeed, his daughter was in great part responsible for the first part of the "Alatriste" novels as she carried out quite a lot of the work of investigating historical documents relating to 17th Century Madrid. His novels have the common thread of being based on real historical times and that in each case a great deal of investigation goes into the making of his stories, as well as the fact that he has had to learn a great deal on topics ranging from chess-playing to historical first-editions, from 16th Century Dutch masters to Informatics and even swordsmanship. His extraordinary imaginative abilities have been able to produce well-written adventure stories. But for Arturo Pérez-Reverte, who has his own yacht which is his great passion, "true freedom starts ten miles out to sea."