La hija del coronel

***29^th Premio Ateneo in Seville***

«The author of La hija del coronel, in an incredible turn of the screw, arrives in Melilla in the foreign legion, and creates an action-packed story of love, sex, violence and friendship among legionnaires  which is pure cinema, but, and this has to be underlined, is also pure literature.» Javier Goñi, El País-Babelia.

«A story which, due to the Soldiers’ life together in the barracks and the implicit cruelty of some of the characters, reminds us, in some of the scenes, of La ciudad y los perros, by Vargas Llosa. […] All the necessary ingredients are there: love, sex and violence, to great narrative effect. This book captures you from the very first pages.» Andrés Aguirre, El Mercurio-Leer

(The Colonel’s Daugther) At the end of the seventies, José – a young countryman conscious of his poverty and his social class, relegated to a sad and miserable life- decides to enrol in the foreign legion. In Melilla he falls passionately in love with Maria, the daughter of the Colonel, but this relationship will not only bring him up against the father and the other suitors of the girl,  but it will oblige him to flee form his own identity, leading him down a dangerous path of lies and traps. La hija del coronel is a story of love, friendship, betrayal and revenge, of raised emotions, half truths and white lies. The action-packed rhythm of his narration, the passionate intrigue of the story and his disturbing background of sex, cruelty and violence – but also of submission and camaraderie – make it a surprising and uneasy novel.