Francisco Casavella

On April 2, 1767, Martín de Viloalle embarks on a journey whose consequences will shape his entire life. He decides to accompany the Jesuits expelled from Spain by Charles III. This choice takes him to Catholic Rome, the German states, the Kingdom of Denmark, and revolutionary Paris—settings for a succession of tragicomic events.

In those years, he becomes a not-so-honorable member of a marginal, wandering, philosophical, artistic, and swindling society, drifting from court to court to satisfy the appetite, lust, intellect, and above all the boredom of Europe’s eighteenth-century aristocracy. Enlightened minds and adventurers alike, characters who build their identities behind a permanent mask until they reach peculiar insights into the deception of the human condition and the mirage of History. They navigate a world where power is as much a fiction as it is a palpable reality. Corrupt visionaries, perhaps—but visionaries nonetheless—who explored the decadence and intrigues of the nobility of the Ancien Régime and fashioned the appearances of a new age and a new civilization. Our own.

First published in 2008 after winning that year’s Premio Nadal, we now bring back Lo que sé de los vampiros (What I Know About Vampires) by Francisco Casavella, author of the great Barcelona novel El día del Watusi. Casavella invites us to uncover the shadows and contradictions of momentous events and their leading figures: Voltaire, Frederick of Prussia, Mirabeau, and Madame de Pompadour.