Una oración por Nora / A Prayer for Nora
Short stories and novellas , 2002
Editora Regional de Extremadura
“ [...] recounts in the first person the narrator’s memories of his student years at the University of Urbana, a time of parties and uncertainties marked by the presence of Nora, the enigmatic girl whose memory marks the protagonist’s foreseeable life beyond his return to Spain, his two marriages, his two children. Agile and contained, with no pretensions other than those it achieves, Cercas’ story manages to combine confidence and melancholy without sadness. The book ends by approaching the author himself from two perspectives, biography and bibliography, to prove that there’s life after Salamis. In fact, that’s where this story fits in, just like that splendid volume of articles by the same publisher: Una buena temporada (A Good While).” J.R.M. “Javier Cercas vuelve a América.” El País: Babelia. May 2002.