UN MAR DE LÁGRIMAS
A SEA OF TEARS
By Elena del Amo
192 pages
Publication date: 2006
ISBN: 978-84-95764-45-4
Retail price: 14.50 € (including VAT)
I walk across the city and, after asking several times, find the terrace bar in the seaside square where I’ve arranged to meet Gustavo. I sit down and ask for a milk coffee and a pastry. I wait, staring at the sea, past the swimmers and the beach packed with holidaymakers. My gaze is fixed on the line where sea and sky meet, on the fine stripe that is now imperceptible because of the fine mist that blurs the horizon where the sea abruptly disappears. Time passes and I keep staring at the sea.
At last, just when I decide to turn my eyes landwards, I see a group of soldiers invading the square. Suddenly, one of them breaks away and comes towards me.
I immediately recognise Gustavo by the slight hop in his walk.
Elena del Amo (Madrid, 1948) is a writer, scriptwriter and translator. Her stories have been published in the newspapers Informaciones and El Diario Montañés, and also in the reviews Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Norte, La revista hispánica de Amsterdam, Sísifo, Ínsula and Senda. She has been awarded the City of Badalona Prize and the “Asociación Cultural Prometeo” award for her stories “Desayuno de pastas y licores” (Pastry and Liqueur Breakfast) and “Sonatas”. Apart from writing the script for the television programme “El caso de las envenenadas de Valencia” (The Case of the Poisoned Women of Valencia), she wrote and directed the short film “Presencia familiar”, which received an honourable mention from the Ministry of Culture, and this was followed by the Best Author Prize for the script and directing of the film “Penumbra”. Some years later, she received a Ministry of Culture grant to write the film script for “El carruaje” (The Carriage). She has also received the Stendhal Prize for her translation of Denis Diderot’s, Escritos sobre arte.