El buen soldado

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard ...", begins to tell us at the beginning of "The Good Soldier" by John Dowell, one of its protagonists. In a calm tone he tells us about his situation and his background, as well as those of his wife Florence and those of the Ashburnham couple (Edward and Leonora), with whom they coincide every year for health reasons at the Nauheim spa, in Germany. However, this somewhat anodyne beginning that seems to promise only the story of two couples as distinguished as vulgar is only the gateway to one of the most irresistible and dazzling novels that have been written about deception and lies, jealousy, control, infidelities and unfinished loves, decadence, selfishness and destruction.