Open Heart A Novel

This intimate family novel that follows the rise and fall of a great love 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—the story of an excessive love, passionate and unstable, forged through countless fights and reconciliations, which had a profound effect on their entire family.
    Manuel Lindo came from nothing, but stubbornly worked his way up at the Dredging and Construction Company. Obliged to move from city to city for his job, the family couldn’t put down roots, and Elvira and her siblings’ childhood was marked by unpredictability. As they pass through temporary homes, they’re caught between Manuel’s outsized temper and their young mother’s worsening illness, which would tragically take her life.
    Beginning with nine-year-old Manuel’s experience in Madrid in 1939, Open Heart takes us on a sweeping journey through Spain full of beautifully observed insights about love in its many forms.

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 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.