Andrés Faulques is a world-renown war photographer, retired to a tower atop Spain's Cala del Arráez, where he is painting a large mural on the inside walls and reminiscing on conversations with his missing colleague (and girlfriend), Olvido, about the changing art of chronicling war?from paintings to photographs.
As he reflects, Faulques is unpleasantly surprised by a visitor, the brooding and disconsolate Ivo Markovic. They first met in a war-torn town in the Balkans, when Faulques photographed Markovic, then a wounded and shell-shocked student recently mobilized for the Croatian Army. Markovic challenges Faulques to remember the intense photograph, a picture for which Faulques had won the prestigious Europa Focus award, and for which Markovic experienced some fame, and much peril. Markovic has come to kill him, but not before making sure Faulques understands his story?that he is more than just a snapshot for a magazine cover, that he is part of a tragedy-stricken, hope-deprived culture, and participant in many atrocious battles. He wants to kill Faulques for his "ingenuity in creating horror," for walking away from so much suffering to revel in his own success, but not before torturing him with painful memories and looming inquiries, including the mystery of Olvido's disappearance in the Balkans.
Their intense dialogue, the dark nature of their interactions, and the looming threat of death and revenge intertwine for a spine-tingling meditation on the meaning of life, war and art.
Praise for Arturo Pérez-Reverte's THE QUEEN OF THE SOUTH:"Pérez-Reverte's literary thriller explodes with history, heartbreak [and] determination...An epic suspense story of heart and grit...The prose is as rich and dense as a flourless chocolate cake." ?ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
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 was one o'clock. He heard the usual woman's voice, amplified by the loudspeaker system, and it seemed even stronger and clearer when the boat drew even with the inlet, for then the sound reached the tower with no obstacle other than the few pines and bushes that despite erosion and slides were still clinging to the cliff face.
This place is known as Cala del Arráez. It was once the refuge of Berber pirates. Up there on the top of the cliff you can see an old watchtower that was constructed at the beginning of the eighteenth century as a part of the coastal defense, with the specific purpose of warning nearby villages of Saracen incursions . . .
It was the same voice every day: educated, with good diction. Faulques imagined the woman to be young; no doubt a local guide who accompanied the tourists on the three-hour tour the boat--a sixty-five-foot tender painted blue and white that docked in Puerto Umbría--made between Ahorcados Island and Cabo Malo. In the last two months, from atop the cliff, Faulques had watched it pass, its deck filled with people armed with film and video cameras as summertime music thundered over the loudspeakers, so loud that the interruptions of the woman's voice came as a relief.
A well-known painter lives in that tower, which stood abandoned for a long time, and he is embellishing the entire interior wall with a large mural. Unfortunately, it is private property and no visitors are allowed . . .
This time the woman was speaking Spanish, but on other occasions it might be English, Italian, or German. Only when the tickets were bought with francs--four or five times that summer--did a masculine voice relieve her, in French. At any rate, Faulques thought, the season was almost over; with every trip there were fewer tourists on board the tender, and soon...
Reviews
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Pérez-Reverte's novel is a mystery, a memoir, a thriller, and a philosophical treatise on the nature of love, art, and war. Andres Falques, a retired war photographer, spends his days painting a massive mural incorporating scenes from horrendous battles. Simon Vance's portrayal of Falques reveals a numb, world-weary, isolated shell, detached not only from others, but also from himself. When a Croatian soldier who has suffered torture and the murder of his family because of a Falques photo shows up, the two men discuss their responsibility for the horrors of war, Vance's performance forces listeners to question their own moral obligations as observers of the world's suffering. Vance's characters are distinct and expressive, evolving as the story progresses. The listener will long remember Vance's delivery of these two voices. M.H.N. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
The Times (London)...
"[Pérez-Reverte's] best book yet . . . a game of mental chess, an excursion into art, history and imagination."
Scott Simon, author of Pretty Birds...
"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."
Chicago Tribune...
"Arturo Pérez-Reverte has established himself as the master of the intellectual thriller."
