Last Evenings with Teresa

Set in post-war Barcelona, Last Evenings with Teresa is a timeless story of desire and ambition by the winner of the Premio Cervantes. Winner of Spain's Premio Biblioteca Breve.

'Spain's finest contemporary novelist' Guardian

'Juan Marse's contribution to European fiction has been consistently remarkable' Times Literary Supplement

From one of Spain's most acclaimed authors, comes an extraordinary novel about ambition and longing set against the backdrop of post-war Barcelona.

Teresa is everything he wants. She is beautiful, charming, rebellious, and born with every advantage in life. He has only ever existed on the margins. A poor immigrant from Murcia, earning his living stealing and selling motorbikes, he could only ever dream of being with the daughter of the Catalan bourgeoisie.

When their desires take hold, they must face the realities of a world designed to keep them apart.

With Last Evenings with Teresa, Marse has created a portrait of two unforgettable literary heroes whose love affair captures all the tensions, passions and contradictions of a generation living in the shadow of a civil war but who, despite the odds, continue to dream.

'Last Evenings with Teresa ... has everything one can ask of a novel; it seems to have been written in a state of grace' Javier Cercas

'Between illusions and realities, with his own free creative will - the opposite of the recipe for a social novel - Juan Marse offered a memorable panorama of 1950s Barcelona and its wild heroism' Lluis Izquierdo

'I consider Juan Marse the best storyteller Spanish literature has given us in many decades' Ignacio Echevarria

'He has never written a single page where something interesting isn't happening' Eduardo Mendoza

'One of Spain's most acclaimed writers' New York Times