Newsflash! Free excerpts of María Dueñas’s new novel, Misión olvido, take over the web. How many can you find?
Remember Spain’s mega-blockbuster El tiempo entre costuras? Of course you do. It’s been inescapable in Spain for the last couple of years. I even reviewed the English translation over at Books4Spain, although I haven’t had the opportunity to watch the TV series yet. And its author, María Dueñas, hasn’t been slacking. Her second novel Misión olvido (Mission: Oblivion) is released today, and various excerpts have been released to tantalise us. It’s definitely worth a look, even if the comments over at El País suggest the inevitable backlash is in full swing. So far, I’ve found:
The opening pages at Antena.3 or on Dueñas’s own website
Thirteen pages of chapter 3 at El País
So, what’s it like? Well, I’ve read both extracts, and I’m intrigued, not least because on the strength of this extract at least, it sounds very autobiographical. Dueñas, of course, is a Professor of English at the Universidad de Murcia, and has been on sabbatical in the US for the last couple of years. All being well, I’ll be off to the US myself next spring for a couple of months, to work on the Edwardians book and visit some Spanish community archives, so I might just pop Misión into my suitcase as inspiration. Or not … depending on how the protagonist’s trip turns out.
