This novel by Javier Cercas goes from less to more, as if it were a movie. It has something cinematographic, when seeing how the necessary elements are built to understand that in the end [attention SPOILER] is nothing more than an apocryphal autobiography of Cercas himself: his novelistic success (especially for Soldados de Salamina), his connection with Girona, with the academic world, writing ... The point of saying [SPOILER] that the end of the story is nothing more than the one that is read, makes us reflect on the genre of meta-history. It talks about herself. But we do not know this until we enter to the final stretch of history. And all this is accompanied by many narrative elements that give to the fiction an unstoppable reading. This is one of the best Cercas novels I have read (if not the best) in which the mankind is analyzed down to the finest detail: love, hate, life, death, loneliness, failure, success ... is an explosive cocktail of emotions that weave a story a good start and better end.