Terra Nostra / Terra Nostra
Novel , 1975
Alfaguara
Pages: 960
Philip II, the ‘Defender of the Faith’, is the most powerful monarch in the world. His reign terrorizes while a new world is being born. Philip is tired and ill; the shame from his excesses leads him to hide away in the palace he ordered to be built as his last abode: the Escorial. All of a sudden, three mysterious young men appear with a red cross on their backs; one of them speaks of a new world, an Eden with beautiful cities, volcanos and pyramids, where cruelty, pain and death live among supernatural beings like the lady of butterflies. The Defender of the Faith can’t rest just yet: he is duty-bound to crucify these infidels… Will he finally be able to govern a fair and just world?
"Terra Nostra is the spreading out of the novel, the exploration of its possibilities, the voyage to the edge of what only a novelist can see and say." Milan Kundera