The Back Room

In the middle of the night, a woman awakens to find a stranger in her bedroom. Though she cannot determine who he is—or, indeed, whether he is even real at all and not just an extension of her dreams or her writing—she is drawn into a conversation with her unexpected guest. What she tells him becomes the story of a woman coming of age in the repressive Spain of the Franco era.

In The Back Room Carmen Martín Gaite spins out a hypnotic evocation...