New Spanish Titles - Year 2015

Barcelonta, Barcelona, the early sixties: anarchist urban guerillas are still alive and kicking, a headache for Franco's political police. The former Belgian Congo, in the same decade: European mercenaries are to be found in the war torn country. And some of those mercenaries are Spanish and their reasons for being in the Congo are as surprising as their personal stories.

On the eve of San Juan in 1980, the inhabitants of Calabella, on the Costa Brava, are waiting for the mythical Ava Gardner, who is going to open the town's summer cinema. Everyone is on the lookout for the actress, except Justo, the youngest of the strange Brightman family.

"I feel like those voluntary exiles – if that isn't a contradiction in terms – who never find peace anywhere because, at heart, they have not severed their ties with the one thing it is impossible break with: ourselves." A Peruvian immigrant writes a diary that starts with his new job in a slot machine arcade.

The plot of The Empty Region transports us from the camps of sacred warriors in Pakistan to the security corridors of the CIA and FBI. It is a fascinating puzzle filled with historic characters, among them Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush, as well as public servants who understand the ins and outs of tragedy.