Open Heart

Elvira Lindo was born in Cádiz, Spain. Before becoming a fiction writer, she was a presenter, actress, and scriptwriter for television and radio. Lindo received the Atlántida Prize from the Editors Union of Catalonia and the Biblioteca Breve Prize for her novel Una palabra tuya. In addition to authoring numerous other successful books, including the international bestselling Manolito Gafotas series, Lindo is a frequent contributor to the Spanish daily newspaper El País.Adrian Nathan West is a writer and literary critic based in Spain. He has translated more than twenty books, among them Rainald Goetz’s Insane and Sibylle Lacan’s A Father: Puzzle.

"Following the rise and fall of a great love, this intimate family novel is also a moving tribute to the generation that struggled to survive in Spain after the Civil War. In Open Heart, Elvira Lindo tells the story of her parents, which is the story of an excessive love, a passionate and unstable love story forged through constant anger and reconciliation, with an entire family's mood dependent on it. Her father's outsized personality, his caprices, his decisions mark the rhythms of a life characterized by drifting: after the wedding, Manuel's job in the Dredging and Construction Company obliges him to change cities time after time, preventing him, his wife, and their children from settling down roots. Places pass by while their love disintegrates and their children grow up in a family history marked by her father's character and the tragic illness and early death of her mother"