The Way

2nd edition

At eleven, Daniel the Owl senses that his path lies in the village, alongside his friends, its people, and its birds. But his father wants him to go to the city to continue his secondary education. Throughout the sleepless night before his departure, Daniel, a lump in his throat, will recall his adventures in the countryside with his friends—Roque the Tough and Germán the Scabby—as they explore the sky and the earth, and relive the escapades of the village’s simple folk. The human warmth with which this child’s-eye view introduces us to the village, allowing us to discover an impressive gallery of characters, and the vivid force with which they are brought to life through often caricatured features, are among the novel’s greatest achievements.

A joyful evocation of a time whose charm and fascination we only recognise once it has slipped through our fingers, The Way is, with its blend of clear-eyed realism, subtle humour, restrained nostalgia, and poetic shimmer, not only one of Miguel Delibes’s finest novels but also, as critics have noted, “one of the masterpieces of contemporary fiction.”