El derecho a soñar

Juan Manuel de Prada has not hesitated to describe this biography dedicated to the Catalan writer Ana María Martínez Sagi (1907-2000) as "her life's work". Not only because of its colossal ambition, but because it is the result of an obsession that has haunted the author for more than two decades, when he published a novel entitled Las Esquinas del Aire, based on the testimony that Martínez Sagi, then in the aftermath of his life, transmitted to him. In this way, that woman of plural talents (poet, reporter, athlete, pioneer of feminism...) could be rescued from oblivion. But, over time, the author would discover that this testimony contained some gaps and inaccuracies, some conscious or involuntary omissions, some fabled or embellished memories. And he then launched into ocean research that has occupied half his life. The discoveries that Prada made were much juicier and more exciting (also, at times, disturbing) than he ever suspected; and so he was able to reconstruct a shocking life of amazing events, which he has now captured in his most ambitious and brilliant work. The right to dream gives us the possibility of peeking into that tumultuous life, in which many other affluent lives are intertwined that make up a dazzling map of an entire era. Because The Right to Dream is not just a biography of Ana María Martínez Sagi; is the biography of the suffering and busy Spanish twentieth century.