El Mundo / The World

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

"What would have happened if on that distant childhood day I hadn't gone back to the basement through the same hole I had crawled out from? Maybe life would have forever kept that same glow, or that fever."

"There are books that, same as a car running a red light, violently cross your path. This is one of those books that run a red light," explains Millás. "I had been assigned to write a story about myself, so I began following me. One day I said to myself, 'My father had a store of electro-medical equipment.' And then the shop appeared before me, with me and my father inside. He was testing an electric scalpel on a steak. Suddenly, he said, 'Look, Juanjo, it cauterizes the wound as it opens it.' I understood that writing, just like that scalpel, cauterizes wounds while it opens them, and I knew why I was a writer. I had just been run over by a novel."

Winner of both the National Narrative Award and the Premio Planeta, praised by critics and readers alike, The World masterfully describes the transition of a teenage boy to adult life, but also the discovery of an original and imaginative way to observe and understand reality.