Just One More Day
In a wintery Valencia, Spain, the protagonist—a writer experiencing a creative slump—finds herself blocked during her writing until her editor sends her the correspondence between philosopher Albert Camus and Spanish actress María Casares. As she reads this legendary love story, one of the most remarkable of the 20th century, something ignites within her.
It’s 1944. In occupied Paris, Edith Piaf sings in smoky bars, and theaters are packed as people yearn to dream. In the home of French writer Michel Leiris, María Casares, a young actress of Spanish origin and a Republican, meets Albert Camus, an acclaimed writer and member of the Resistance. Ten years her senior, they become lovers on the same day 15,000 American paratroopers descend on Normandy. But Camus is married to a young woman in Algiers, Francine, who will soon arrive in Paris.
As she continues her research, the protagonist recalls her own tumultuous relationship with a Bosnian writer, W, whom she met at a writers’ conference in the Aran Valley. Enigmatic, contradictory, and seductive, their affair sparks a fiery passion, yet she always senses that W is hiding something, never fully revealing the truth of his past. One day, after they are brutally attacked on a beach in Barcelona, W refuses to go to the hospital or report it. She returns to Valencia, but W vanishes for months. Heartbroken, she struggles to cope with his absence and tries to uncover what might have happened in that strange assault on the beach. What is W hiding?
In her confusion and heartbreak, the love story of Camus and Casares affects her like a trigger, but most of all, like a catharsis. By delving into that love story, the protagonist discovers a light that continues to illuminate us all.
Request more informationOriginal Language
SPANISH | Espasa/Planeta
