The Painter of Souls

Welcome to early 20th-century Barcelona—an age of Modernism’s rise, clashes of ideologies, conflict between generations; everywhere, heated arguments and boiling blood. Young artist Dalma Salda, in love with life, painting, and a woman, is torn between genuine art that demands total self-giving and optional—but convenient—trifles for the rich and indifferent; between pleasure and duty, between romance and comfort. Dalmau searches for himself and his true path—and together with his beloved will walk along dreadful paths amid the thrill and horror of a world standing on the threshold of a new century.

Ildefonso Falcones, a lawyer by profession, a historian by calling, one of Spain’s largest contemporary writers—his first novel “The Cathedral of the Sea” earned him numerous prestigious awards, including Euskadi de Plata (2006, Spain), Qué Leer (2007, Spain), and the Giovanni Boccaccio Prize (2007, Italy). Falcones’s books have already sold a combined circulation of more than 10 million copies across dozens of countries. “Soul Painter” (his hymn to his native Barcelona) is a magnificent saga about people flowing through the stream of historical events and a chronicle of human passions: love, revenge, fidelity to art and ideals in turbulent times when everything changes—from politics to morality and aesthetics. History opens up in a gigantic canvas; passions create a great city, and the city shapes human destinies for centuries to come. In Russian for the first time!