Molina Foix’s award-winning novel begins with the letters that a childhood friend of Federico García Lorca writes to the poet who has inspired him from afar and achieves its originality through a structure of letters crossing between real and fictional characters spanning the history of Spain from the 1920’s to 1999.

When asked if the work was indeed an historical novel, Molina Foix replied: “History appears, but it passes by as a backdrop, as if at home, in slippers. What interested me was to tell the story of the ordinary and innermost lives of a succession of characters – some well-known, others invented, who lived – and suffered – in a Spain that was sometimes tragic.”  (“La Historia aparece, pero en zapatillas. Discurre al fondo, desde dentro de casa. Lo que me interesaba era contar la vida cotidiana e íntima de una serie de personajes, unos conocidos y otros inventados, que vivieron – y sufrieron – en una España en ocasiones trágica.” El Mundo, October 17, 2007).