Confessions

Description

An instant bestseller in nine languages, Confessions is an astonishing story of one man's life, interwoven with a narrative that stretches across centuries to create an addictive and unforgettable literary symphony. At 60 and with a diagnosis of early Alzheimer's, Adria Ardevol re-examines his life before his memory is systematically deleted. He recalls a loveless childhood where the family antique business and his father's study become the centre of his world; where a treasured Storioni violin retains the shadows of a crime committed many years earlier. His mother, a cold, distant and pragmatic woman leaves him to his solitary games, full of unwanted questions. An accident ends the life of his enigmatic father, filling Adria's world with guilt, secrets and deeply troubling mysteries that take him years to uncover. Ambitious, powerful and deeply moving, with an overwhelming theme of guilt and redemption, Confessions is a consummate masterpiece in any language, with an ending that will not just leave you thinking, but probably change the way you think forever.

Jaume Cabre is a Catalan philologist, novelist and screenwriter who graduated in Catalan Philology from the University of Barcelona, is a high-school teacher on leave of absence, a professor at the University of Lleida, and a member of the Philological Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans. For many years he has combined literary writing with teaching. He has also worked in television and cinema. He collaborated with Joaquim Maria Puyal as creator and scriptwriter of the first Catalan television series: La Granja (1989-1992), followed by numerous other shows. Confessions was sold for translation to more than 20 languages and has sold more than a million copies worldwide.

Not only a profound meditation on evil but a dazzling work of imagination * Scotland on Sunday * Monumental * Guardian * Hitting the jackpot with Confessions, Cabre's is a story of European history from the Inquisition to Auschwitz * Figaro * Its complexity turns Confessions into a piece of writing that has the power to influence our view of the world - a quality belonging to the best of literature' * El Mundo *