In the rain-soaked streets of an ancient Italian city, a young Galician nobleman pursues the one woman he cannot have. The Marqués de Bradomín, handsome and cursed with an insatiable heart, has come to Ligura chasing María Rosario, the pure daughter of the Gaetani family, the one woman in the world who has refused him, and therefore the only one he truly desires. She stands at the threshold of the convent, her vows almost spoken, her soul already given to God. What follows is a fever of pursuit, a dance of resistance and yearning, as Bradomín throws himself against the walls of her virtue with the same ferocity he might reserve for salvation itself. Written in 1904, this is the first of Valle-Inclán's four Sonatas, autobiographical novels shaped like musical compositions, and it established him as the voice of Spanish modernism. The prose moves like light through cathedral glass, beautiful, fractured, sacred and profane at once. This is a novel for readers who believe the most devastating love stories are the ones that can never be won.
