Juan García Hortelano

A work of dazzling dialogues that describes the vicissitudes of a “lost generation” in Madrid in the 1960s. 

For many The Great Moment of Mary Tribune is the masterpiece of Juan García Hortelano, undoubtedly one of the most brilliant writers of Spanish literature in the twentieth century. A work of maturity and a display of stunning stylistic virtuosity, this novel, published for the first time in 1972, tells the story of a group of friends on the frontiers of youth who see their way of life, their sentimental education and their preconceptions shattered by the irruption of an flamboyant and obsessive character, Mary Tribune, an American who the narrator accidentally hooks up with during a night on the tiles. That meeting will trigger a series of upheavals that challenge the integrity and inflame the hatred, desire and envy and all the characters, doomed to stage a comedy of errors of profound moral density and subtle ironic atonement.