The author was a visiting professor in Oxford for a while in the 1980s, as Lecturer in Spanish Literature. This novel is about exactly such a visiting professorship by a Madrilene scholar. Very well-written with many comic and poignant scenes.

Here are the intriguing first sentences of the book:

Of the three, two have died since I left Oxford and the superstitious thought occurs to me that they were perhaps just waiting for me to arrive and live out my time there in order to give me the chance to know them and, now, to speak about them. In other words—and this is equally superstitious—I may be under obligation to speak about them.

And here is a quote set in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The narrator is following his lover Clare, her father Mr Newton and her son Eric through the Ashmolean Museum:


In front of the Alfred Jewel (a ninth-century cloisonné enamel, the pride of the Ashmolean) I heard her read out loud (like any father or mother) the Anglo-Saxon inscription cut into the band of gold filigree that encircles the supposed portrait of Alfred the Great: "Look, Eric, here it says Aelfred mec heht gewyrcan which means 'Alfred ordered me made'. See? It's the jewel itself saying that, it's the jewel speaking and telling us how it came to be made. It's said the same thing now for eleven centuries, and it will go on saying the same thing for ever." The child Eric said nothing.

Later, on the same floor, before a rapid or unfinished sketch by Rembrandt depicting the painter's wife, Saskia, asleep in bed (only she isn't really in bed, but rather dressed or in a dressing gown and covered with a blanket, as if she were a convalescent), I heard Clare say to her son: "She looks like you in bed all these weeks, don't you think? Except you had the television to watch," and she stroked the back of his neck, setting her bracelets jingling again. Then she added, still looking at Saskia and no doubt ignorant of the fact that Saskia had died when she was younger even than herself and never had the chance to grow old (mistaking Saskia's possible illness for old age): "That's what I'll be like when I'm old." And young Eric said nothing or at least nothing I managed to catch.

Dear finder and reader,

This book, 'All Souls', has been thematically released at the synagogue in the Folkingestraat. It's a thematic release because tonight the Netherlands Bach ensemble performs a concert here: 'Allerzielen - Rouw Zonder Grenzen', exactly on All Souls / Allerzielen 2024, namely, 2 November.

I hope you will enjoy reading the book. Please leave a journal entry on this BookCrossing site so that I can read what you thought of it. This can be done anonymously. Many thanks and happy reading!

Best wishes,
violoncellix