ABOUT
THE BOOK

Manolo Follano, a 40-year-old Spanish roué, has built a comfortable life for himself in his hometown by the sea. His architectural design company is thriving, his suits are Italian linen, his cigars Cuban, he’s on friendly terms with his two ex-wives and happily free to enjoy the charms of women much younger. For a playboy like Manolo – handsome, fastidious, opinionated and more than a little vain – to be told by his doctor and friend that he is HIV Positive is, it would seem, the end of everything.

In Alan Warner’s fifth novel, however, this devastating news is only the beginning. Manolo strolls around his familiar haunts recalling, with Proustian clarity, the loves of his life, as he prepares to tell each of them his terrible secret – all the while bracing himself for the final reckoning, and the thin hope of redemption. In a series of vivid, erotic, hilarious flashbacks he plays back his life in glowing Technicolor: each wild and glorious set-piece building towards a complete picture of a life – flawed, certainly, but passionate, richly imagined and deeply humane.