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Zusatztext “[Pérez-Reverte’s] best book yet . . . a game of mental chess! an excursion into art! history and imagination.” – The Times (London) “A remarkable achievement. Not only does the clash of ideas and emotions echo after you have turned the last page–this novel will change what you see in images from datelines around the world.” – Scott Simon! author of Pretty Birds “Arturo Pérez-Reverte has established himself as the master of the intellectual thriller.” –Chicago Tribune “[A] taut literary thriller [with] meticulous detail and dark! brooding tone.” –Publishers Weekly “A gripping story of war! cruelty! testimony! and the past . . . Arturo Pérez-Reverte is the great European storyteller of the 21st century.” –Simon Sebag Montefiore! author of Young Stalin “Reminds American readers of the sublime rhetoric of Faulkner and how such passages in the hands of a master can add to the momentum of the story.” –San Francisco Chronicle “A tour de force [that] explores the great themes of human existence.” –The Australian Informationen zum Autor Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s bestselling books, including The Club Dumas, The Flanders Panel, The Fencing Master , and the Captain Alatriste series, have been translated into thirty-four languages in fifty countries and have sold millions of copies. Born in Cartagena, Spain, Pérez-Reverte now lives in Madrid, where he was recently elected to the Spanish Royal Academy. A former war journalist, he covered conflicts in Angola, Bosnia, Croatia, El Salvador, Lebanon, Nicaragua, the Persian Gulf, and Sudan, among others. He now writes fiction full time. Klappentext Acclaimed author Perez-Reverte has earned a distinguished reputation as a master of the literary thriller with his international bestsellers "The Club Dumas" and "The Queen of the South." Now! in this haunting new work! he has written a captivating tale of love! war! and revenge. 1. He swam one hundred and fifty strokes out to sea and the same number back, as he did each morning, until he felt the round pebbles of the shore beneath his feet. He dried himself, using the towel he’d hung on a tree trunk that had been swept in by the sea, put on his shirt and sneakers, and went up the narrow path leading from the cove to the watchtower. There he made coffee and began, mixing blues and grays that would lend his work the proper atmosphere. During the night—each night he slept less and less, and that only a restless dozing—he had decided that cold tones would be needed to delineate the melancholy line of the horizon, where a veiled light outlined the silhouettes of warriors walking beside the sea. Those tones would envelop them in reflections from the waves washing onto the beach that he had spent four days creating with light touches of Titian white, applied pure. So in a glass jar he mixed white, blue, and a minimal amount of natural sienna, until they were transformed into a luminous blue. Then he daubed some of the paint on the oven tray he used as a palette, dirtied the mixture with a little yellow, and worked without stopping the rest of the morning. Finally he clamped the handle of the brush between his teeth and stepped back to judge the effect. Sky and sea were now harmoniously combined in the mural that circled the interior of the tower, and although there was still a lot to be done, the horizon was now a smooth, slightly hazy line that accentuated the loneliness of the men—dark strokes splashed with metallic sparks—dispersed and moving away beneath the rain. He rinsed the brushes with soap and water and set them to dry. From the foot of the cliff below came the sound of the motors and music of the tourist boat that ran along the coast every day at the same hour. With no need to look, Andrés Faulques knew that it w...
