Manuel Vilas

“At the age of sixty-two, I'm facing the second major breakup of my life.”

 “I'm not in love with you anymore.” With this simple sentence, pronounced phlegmatically and calmly by the woman he loves, Manuel Vilas finds his life suddenly collapsing into a bottomless pit.

 She is also a writer, the winner of several prestigious awards in Spain and with a successful academic career in the United States under her belt. When they first met twelve years earlier, they didn't get on. The second time they met, at a literary fair in Miami, they completely fell for each other. Was she the love of his life? Undoubtedly. Was it a perfect relationship? Not at all. The class differences – she was from a wealthy family and had no financial worries, the minor domestic squabbles and the constant reproaches emerge in this story with the heartrending poignancy of the best songs about lost love.

 The couple has one last trip together lying ahead of them, one of the many they've taken, whose high cost has already been covered. They had paid for it before breaking up: a cruise around icy Iceland that will now seal the end of the relationship.

 Laced with fiendish humour and admirable self-irony, Manuel Vilas’ latest book reveals the inner workings of a relationship as happy as it is complex, as well as the spiralling vertigo of powerlessness and loneliness, the possibility of never falling madly and happily in love again after sixty.

“A sincere and bitter reflection on heartbreak, the ruins it leaves behind, the emotions it awakens, and the horizons it opens up.” La Razón

“When he writes, Manuel Vilas confesses, strips himself bare, reveals himself, exposes himself, wounds himself, moves himself—and moves us. Iceland fits naturally within that emotional territory.” Karina Sainz Borgo, ABC

“He turns an intimate divorce into a universal story. (…) That great Vilas is a brilliant writer, full of humor and fragility.” José María Pozuelo Yvancos, ABC Cultural

“The strength of Iceland lies precisely in its ability to transform an intimate experience into a shared emotion. In its way of turning pain into beauty.” Preslava Boneva, The Objective

“Iceland is not just the chronicle of a breakup. It is the obsessive account of someone who cannot accept being left.” Ahora qué leo

“One of the most hypnotic and unforgettable narratives I have read in a long time.” Benjamín Prado

“Iceland and Ordesa, written by a brilliant and hypersensitive writer, form a marvelous diptych on love and loss.” Anton Castro

“A powerful narrative, a raw confession, full of wounds, all seasoned with the narrative force that characterizes Manuel Vilas’s writing.” Fernando Aramburu

“A wild, funny, and tragic work that explores the imperfect nature of love. A romantic book for anti-romantic times.” Sergio del Molino

“An unrepeatable novel, full of emotion and truth. Manuel Vilas strips himself bare and lays us bare.” Antonio Martínez Asensio

“It left me astonished, for its sincerity, but also because he is exceptionally skilled at speaking about what he has lived.” Pepa Fernández, RNE

“An excellent tribute to literature as a healing instrument, an attempt to save from oblivion everything that is destined to disappear.” Carlos Marzal, Levante

 “One of the two best books about breakups in recent Spanish literature.” Recaredo Veredas, El Debate