Inventing love - José Ovejero - Translated from the Spanish - Kathryn Phillips-Miles and Simon Deefholts

Winner of the Alfaguara Prize (2013)

When Samuel receives a call out of the blue about the death of his lover Clara, his own numbing existence seems about to end. Does it matter that he never knew Clara? And, if he invents a past for his love and his loss, could he even fake his way through her funeral? Unable to pass up the chance at leading a new life, Samuel leads himself down a path of lies, until he can no longer distinguish between what is real and what he has invented.

From one of Spain's most renowned living authors comes an existential thriller of first mistaken and then stolen identity, which brilliantly exposes the fictions people create to sustain themselves in a dehumanising modern world.