The Painter of Battles

There are places from which one never returns. Arturo Pérez-Reverte's most intense and unsettling novel

In a tower by the Mediterranean, searching for the photo he could never take, a former photographer paints a large circular fresco on the wall: the timeless landscape of a battle. He is accompanied in the task by a face returning from the past to collect a mortal debt, and the shadow of a woman who disappeared ten years ago. Around these three characters, Arturo Pérez-Reverte has written the most intense and unsettling story of his long career as a novelist.

Dazzling from beginning to end, The Painter of Battles drags the reader, captivated, through the complex geometry of 20th-century chaos: art, science, war, love, lucidity, and solitude combine in the vast mural of a dying world.

Critics have said...
«The Painter of Battles is, in my opinion, Pérez-Reverte's most disheartening, harshest, and saddest book. And also surely the most lucid, as well as the most ambitious, intellectually and literarily.»
José Manuel Sánchez Ron, El País

«The Spanish writer returns to his past as a war correspondent through this impressive novel... Hardly any book has immersed the reader so deeply in the mire of evil as this one.»
Anthony Palou, Le Figaro Magazine

«Because he has drawn on experience, because he is a seasoned writer forced to share his doubts and scruples with readers, The Painter of Battles is, simply, a great book.»
Jacques de Decaer, Le Soir

«Arturo Pérez-Reverte once again confirms his place as a great master of the historical thriller in this masterful novel that combines secrets buried under the ashes of a tragic past, philosophical glosses, and a diabolical sense of intrigue. Captivating.»
Elias Lévy, Voir-Québec