Lovers on All Saints' Day

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I wrote these stories between 1998 and 2002. Except for “The Return,” which was written near Xhoris, Belgium, they were the first fictions I wrote after arriving in Barcelona in 1999. In choosing them, I thought about something I once heard Tobias Wolff say: that a book of stories should be like a novel in which the characters don’t know each other.

I would like to thank Francis and Suzanne Laurenty, for their hospitality during my year in Belgium; Enrique de Hériz and Yolanda Cespedosa, for their friendship and support during the writing of these stories; and Pilar Reyes, for the dedication with which she read the Spanish version of the manuscript and brought this book into being.