Dublinesque

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE'A writer who has no equal in the contemporary landscape of the Spanish novel.' Roberto Bola oSamuel Riba is about to turn 60. A successful publisher in Barcelona, he is increasingly prone to attacks of anxiety and, looking for distraction, he concocts a spur-of-the-moment trip to Dublin, a city he has never visited but once dreamed about.He sets off for Dublin on the pretext of honouring James Joyce s Ulysses on Bloomsday. But as he and his friends gather in the cemetery to give their orations, a mysterious figure in a mackintosh resembling Joyce s prot g Samuel Beckett hovers in the background. Is it Beckett, or is it the writer of genius that Riba has spent his whole career trying, and failing, to find?