Yellow Rain

Ainelle is a village high in the Spanish Pyrenees. Its houses now stand deserted - and have done so for many years - most of them in ruins. Its last surviving inhabitant, an old man at death's door, lingers on, and as the first snows of the year fall and the 'yellow rain' of autumn leaves flutters about him, he recalls the life he lived and the ghosts - once his friends and neighbours - who now frequents his wavering memory and who have taken possession of his solitude. Hailed on first publication, and continuously reprinted, Julio Llamazares' powerful monologue - an elegy to the power of memory - is rightly regarded as a modern classic of Spanish literature.