Últimas tardes con Teresa

Últimas tardes con Teresa / Last evenings with Teresa

Novel , 1966

Lumen

Pages: 480

Last Evenings with Teresa constitutes one of the milestones of mid-20th century Spanish narrative. Awarded Spain’s Short Novel Prize in 1965, it established the author as one of the most representative writers of modern European literature.

On these pages, we witness the birth of one of the most powerful, enduring literary geographies of our time, post-war Barcelona written against the quiet light of memory. And we also encounter two characters whose long, happy coexistence with several generations of readers has turned them into mythical figures, the ideal embodiment of their time: Teresa, a rebellious, left-wing university student, daughter of the Catalan bourgeoisie, and an attractive, socially ambitious immigrant from Murcia known as the “Pijoaparte”. Their love story reflects all the contradictions of an era, the splendour and misery of the social classes, the naivety of easy commitment, and the bitterness and resentment of losers, those inhabitants of an inner exile in which, forged by so many defeats, they still dream like children.

Last Evenings with Teresa is not only one of the great dramas of my life, but also of many people my age (…) It has everything one can ask of a novel; it seems written in a state of grace.” Javier Cercas

 “The Pijoaparte, so accurate in his naturalism, such a character of the miserable real world, is also a classic hero of novels, one of those young people who are blown away by the breadth of their desires and the designs of their own will, who always appear in Stendhal, Balzac, Maupassant and Flaubert.” –Antonio Muñoz Molina

 “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