Esa puta tan distinguida

Esa puta tan distinguida / That Very Distinguished Bitch

Novel , 2016

Lumen

Pages: 240

“My next novel will deal with the ruses and traps set by our memory, that very distinguished bitch”

Even though he detests the movies made by the director and producer requesting his services, an author famous for depicting the moral ruin of the post-war period in his novels reluctantly accepts a job to write a screenplay about a true case from 1940s Barcelona. The crime occurred at the Delicias Cinema, where a prostitute was murdered in the projection room, strangled with movie tape while the public attended a premiere of Gilda.

During the research process, the writer will discover that sometimes, in real life, crimes lack meaning, and their protagonists are not always heroes or antiheroes, something not everyone seems willing to tolerate in fiction.

In this splendid novel, Juan Marsé, transformed into a sceptical writer, incapable of taking himself seriously, reflects on the tricks of memory and the limits of fiction, while settling accounts with those who manipulate our past to create simple entertainment products, misrepresenting historical memory and trivializing the pain and misery of an entire generation.

"Nourri de références au 7e art, Cette putain si distinguée est surtour un hommage émmouvant, tout en nostalgie, aux vieux cinémas de quartier où tout pouvait arriver; le meilleur comme le pire." Ariane Singer, Le Monde