Institut Ramon LLull

A literature professor’s conventional life is shaken to its core by a series of deaths. He retires to an uninhabited island’s lighthouse, into the life of a willing shipwreck, to think intensely and scarcely ever speak, in the hopes of never again witnessing a loved one’s demise. Determined to halt the implacable passage of time and squeeze the most out of life, his ruminations on time and grief are punctuated by trips to the mainland for provisions both pragmatic and carnal.

Twenty-five years since Riera’s death, this reissue of his most celebrated novel showcases his sumptuous and precise intimist prose, and his philosophical and ethical depth. This dense, lyrical book explores the limits of human freedom of choice through one man’s tormented journey of the soul.