Last Evenings with Teresa

''Spain''s finest contemporary novelist'' Guardian ''Juan Marsé''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, Marsé 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 Marsé offered a memorable panorama of 1950s Barcelona and its wild heroism'' Lluís Izquierdo ''I consider Juan Marsé the best storyteller Spanish literature has given us in many decades'' Ignacio Echevarría ''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