» Ateneo de Sevilla Award
Smoke as a symbol of the ungraspable, of that which escapes and is dispelled. Lucas Lerma, the main character, pursues the smoke in the image of women, in music and in those science books that they sell in the newsstands. Lucas Lerma lives in the present as a place of transit towards the future, which for him is a place of yearning and pipe dreams.
Humo is a novel about the dignity of failure – not glorious failure, but the daily, personal failure of a character that places the greatness of life on the right to live with the hope of false goals.
«In my opinion, FBR’s prose is the most brilliant, most personal, most enviable and surely also the most envied of any Spanish writer of his generation, which is also my generation». Almudena Grandes