Alejandro Gándara

First love is never forgotten.

Aged just 18 years old, Andrés Aja feels lost and confused, and he is secretly in love with one of his friends, Brígida. They live in a small town surrounded by old walls, which seems stuck in time despite the fact that it is 1976 and the whole country is undergoing a miraculous transformation.

A dreamer by nature, Andrés is still unaware of how deeply that first love will firebrand his future. A chance encounter with Brígida many years later, after a lifetime of waiting, gives him the chance to understand why everything had to go so wrong.

With enormous clarity and sensitivity Alejandro Gándara portrays the heartrending passion of first love and the storm of emotions – not always happy ones – unleashed by this overwhelming vital awakening. But what really makes this novel extraordinary is the time perspective: With the hindsight of maturity, first love can be seen as a mirror that reflects our best and worst sides.

“A literary triumph.[…] Only with Alejandro Gándara's talent and extensive craftsmanship can one successfully write about first love.” Babelia, El País

“One of the most solid literary careers on the national scene.” El Cultural

“Magnificently written precisely because there are no empty words. […] A Proustian ‘temps retrouvée’. […] His best novel.” ABC

“Intimate, precise, incisive. […] A magnificent text, in form and substance.” Zenda