Carme Riera

Winner of the Josep Pla Award 1994

During the Spanish Inquisition on the island of Majorca, a small enclave of local Jews –all of whom have been baptized as Christians– determine to escape detention in the Inquisition by escaping to lands of freedom across the Atlantic. But weather frustrates their flight, and eventually thirty-seven of them were captured and condemned to burn at the stake in the Auto-de-Fe. In prose at once lyrical and suspenseful, Riera recreates the lives of Majorcan Jews in the seventeenth century –in a world of inquisitors, aristocrats, merchants, farmers, and soldiers– in a lush mosaic of history and period detail, religion and cultural lore. Already acclaimed around the world, In the Last Blue is at once a beautiful, poetic, riveting, and devastating tale of hope and fear.

“In the Last Blue is a well-crafted and tightly constructed novel against the horrors of intolerance.” El País

“In the Last Blue is an excellent novel that will allow the literary lover to discover a vein of pleasure... When a reader can hardly lift their eyes from a novel, captivated by the unfolding of a dense plot, hooked on the exquisite distillation of its intrigue, and eager to reach the desired ending, there is little else to do but bow to its author.” Heraldo de Aragón

“In the Last Blue stands among the best novels: for its ambition, for its linguistic rigour and richness, for the skill in balancing invention and tradition, and for providing a contemporary thought to a historical novel without losing its period flavour.” El Mundo

“With lightness and admirable skill, Carme Riera captures memorable characters as one might catch beetles to pin them inside a box.” El País

“When the issue of identities that kill and hatred towards the other did not occupy the pages of newspapers, the Mallorcan author explored historical nightmares caused by intolerance with In the Last Blue.” Ara