Muñoz Molina was born in the town of Úbeda in Jaén province. He studied history of art at the University of Granada and journalism in Madrid. He began writing in the 1980s; his first published book, El Robinsón urbano, a collection of his journalistic work, was published in 1984. His columns have regularly appeared in El País and Die Welt.
His first novel, Beatus ille, appeared in 1986. It features the imaginary city of Mágina—a re-creation of his Andalusian birthplace—which would reappear in some of his later works.
In 1987 Muñoz Molina was awarded Spain's National Narrative Prize for El invierno en Lisboa (translated as Winter in Lisbon), a homage to the genres of film noir and jazz music. His El jinete polaco received the Planeta Prize in 1991 and, again, the National Narrative Prize in 1992.
His other novels include Beltenebros (1989), a story of love and political intrigue in post-Civil War Madrid, Los misterios de Madrid (1992), and El dueño del secreto (1994).
Muñoz Molina was elected to Seat u of the Real Academia Española on 8 June 1995; he took up his seat on 16 June 1996.[1]
Muñoz Molina is married to the Spanish author and journalist, Elvira Lindo. He currently resides in New York City, United States, where he served as the director of the Instituto Cervantes from 2004 to 2005.
La noche de los tiempos, 2009. English translation: In the Night of Time. Trans. Edith Grossman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. ISBN978-0547547848.
Un andar solitario entre la gente, 2018. English translation: To Walk Alone in the Crowd. Trans. Guillermo Bleichmar. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. ISBN 9780374190255.
