Alaab al-'umr al-mutaqaddim

Text in Arabic. Gregorio is a middle-aged clerk, grey and ordinary, whose youthful aspirations for an exciting, more fulfilling life have faded completely.

One day, he meets a man named Gil over the phone and everything begins to change.

Through his conversations with Gil, Gregorio forges another personality for himself as Faroni, an attractive polyglot, engineer, poet, and world traveler.

When Gil announces that he is finally coming to meet him, Gregorio becomes desperate to preserve his own lies and embarks upon a dangerous path.

First published in Spanish in 1989, this novel won Spains Critics Prize that same year, followed by the National Literature Prize in 1990, making Luis Landero one of the top names in contemporary Spanish literature.