In 1988 the Spanish poet, novelist, and prolific essayist Julio Llamazares published his second novel, entitled La Lluvia Amarilla (“The Yellow Rain”). Widely praised, it was translated into English years later, leading to even more praise. As one review of the first English translation described it:

“In this somber and elegiac novel… the last, dying resident of a deserted village in the Spanish Pyrenees, ‘forgotten by everyone, condemned to gnaw away at my memory and my bones like an old dog,’ summons the ghosts of his past.”

Left only with his dog after the suicide of his wife, “on what seems to be his final night on earth, he recalls the tragedies that have befallen him,” including the death or abandonment of every child and the collapse of his village into rot due to the closing of the local mill and the departure of all residents, save himself. The review concludes: Continue reading »