A choral and virtuous novel, atypical and ironic, which describes an urban geography of feelings, losses, uncertainties and ambitions.

Experienced businessmen and young entrepreneurs, adolescents of both sexes addicted to their mobiles and their scabrous fantasies, solitary passers-by aware of the reality that surrounds them, privileged dynasties from high-class families and lonely drivers raging at the urban traffic that blights their existence: in this unusual and hilarious tale everything is recognizable, with a few variations, as life as we have always known it. As Mario Vargas Llosa rightly pointed out in relation to another similar text by Luis Goytisolo: «The author enjoys himself, as does the reader, but at the end of the chuckle, in the folds of the smile, we discover an uncomfortable feeling, something thick and unexpected and ask ourselves: who’s laughing at whom? What are we laughing at? And, do we really have a reason to be laughing?»

«The writer establishes the coordinates of a radical re-conception of the genre, to which he dedicates all the techniques that he has developed as an author over the last three decades» (Ignacio Echevarría).

«He constructs his work with a tenacity that is as intelligent as it is implacable. Luis Goytisolo represents one of the most palpable examples of the maturity of his generation of writers. Goytisolo has become, due to the unarguable popularity of his work, one of the most important Spanish authors writing today» (Luis Suñén).

«Without doubt one of the greatest European novelists of the second half of the XXth Century. A cult writer» (Carme Riera, El País).

«Luis Goytisolo is situated in the tradition of the great allegorical writers, from Dante, Calderón and Gracián to James Joyce; but he also agrees with the literary rebels who reject all melodic intentions that aren’t musical (Proust and Faulkner, Beckett and Juan Benet)» (Gonzalo Sobejano).

«An original and cosmopolitan novelist… intellectually rich and an archetype of post-modernity» (Darío Villanueva).

«Luis Goytisolo has been spoken about as a potential Nobel Prize winner…  That doesn’t surprise me… We have before us a mighty literary talent… an exceptional novelist» (Luis María Anson).