Bohemian Lights

Valle-Inclán invented the esperpento here and nobody has yet surpassed him in that territory. Max Estrella, blind, drunk and brilliant, walks the most miserable Madrid from night to dawn, and what he sees is a deformed Spain gazing at itself in a concave mirror. It is theatre that reads like poetry and is understood as politics. The language has a density and originality that does not age. For those who want to know what Spanish literature can do at the outer edge of its possibilities.