‘A book of deep reckoning’ New York Times
‘Becomes a way of looking honestly at what mourning really feels like’ Guardian
A man in tumult returns to Ordesa, the small mountain town where he was born, and where his parents have recently died. He sits down to write. Newly sober, his career on the wane, his relationship with his own children strained, what he produces is a dizzying chronicle of his childhood and an unsparing account of his life’s trials, failures and triumphs. He reckons with the ghosts of his parents, the pain of loss and, as the pages fill with words, he tries to piece together the bits of himself. What is a person without a family? What is a person when faced with memories alone?
An autobiographical novel by a Spanish literary icon, written with the intimacy of a diary, Ordesa is a beautiful, redemptive meditation on identity, grief and the passing of time.