Manuel is growing up in Franco's Spain. He adores his elder sister, María, and they are watched over by their mother, who enjoys reciting poetry, and their father, a construction worker with vertigo. Beyond the walls of the house, he encounters chatty hairdressers and priests, wolf hunters and monstrous carnival effigies. The community is still haunted by the civil war, yet Manuel's world is changing. Coca-Cola opens a factory nearby and news arrives of men landing on the moon. This is a story about family, memory and the experiences that make us who we are.
Author
Manuel Rivas Barrós (born 24 October 1957 in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain) is a Galician writer, poet and journalist. Manuel Rivas Barrós began his writing career at the age of 15. He has written articles and literature essays for Spanish newspapers and television stations like Televisión de Galicia, El Ideal Gallego, La Voz de Galicia, El País, and was the sub-editor of Diario 16 in Galicia. He was a founding member of Greenpeace Spain, and played an important role during the 2002 Prestige oil spill near the Galician coast. As of 2017, Rivas has published 9 anthologies of poetry, 14 novels and several literature essays. He is considered a revolutionary in contemporary Galician literature. His 1996 book "Que me queres, amor?", a series of sixteen short stories, was adapted by director José Luis Cuerda for his film "A lingua das bolboretas" ("Butterfly's Tongue"). His 1998 novel "O lápis do carpinteiro" ("The Carpenter's Pencil") has been published in nine countries and it is the most widely translated work in the history of Galician literature. It also was adapted to cinema as "O Lápis do Carpinteiro".
