The buzzing life of bars, warm evenings by the Manzanares river, the subterranean terrors of the Metro, student days in the sixties, the ruthless underworld of the city's mafia - this captivating anthology reflects the kaleidoscopic character of Madrid. Renowned writers such as Gald¿s and Mar¿ appear alongside others who will be less familiar.

• General Introduction


• Introduction


• The Novel on the Tram


• The Solution


• Sunday Morning


• A Testing Time


• Murder at the Atlantic


• Luzmila


• The Ballad of the River Manzanares


• A Clear Conscience


• Restless Eyes


• Mozart, K.124, for flute and orchestra


• Through the Wall


• Return Journey


• Flying Fish


• Let the Passengers Out


• Fallen from Fortune


• Personality Disorders


• How can this be happening to me?


• Manolito's Toggle


• Sign and Message

Helen Constantine taught languages in schools until 2000, when she became a full-time translator. She has published three volumes of translated stories, Paris Tales, French Tales, and Paris Metro Tales and is currently editing a series of City Tales for Oxford University Press. She has translated Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier and Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos for Penguin. She is married to the writer David Constantine and with him edits the international magazine Modern Poetry in Translation.
Margaret Jull Costa has been a literary translator for over twenty years and has translated many novels and short stories by Portuguese, Spanish and Latin American writers, among them Nobel laureate José Saramago, Fernando Pessoa, Carmen Martín Gaite, and Juan José Saer. She has won various prizes for her work, including, in 2008, the PEN Book-of-the-Month Translation Award and the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her version of Eça de Queiroz's masterpiece The Maias. More recently she won the 2009 and 2010 Premio Valle-Inclán for, respectively, The Accordionist's Son by Bernardo Atxaga and Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell by Javier Marías.