<b>A heady mix of factual and fictitious,</b> befitting of one of cinema’s most imaginative storytellers… [the collection is] <b>bracing, the book serving as an outlet for something Almodóvar can’t express from behind a camera…</b> <i>The Last Dream</i> has its pleasures – some of them lurid, some rather<b> </b>poignant

Observer

'The Life and Death of Miguel'...<b>could have been written by Roberto Bolaño at his height</b>... It’s fascinating that in fiction Almodóvar prefers to inhabit [a] historical and often fantastical universe. To judge by <i>The Last Dream</i>, <b>he’s akin to a Spanish Angela Carter</b>, or a cousin to the undersung Argentinian genius Silvina Ocampo. What his films and stories have in common is a vivid melodrama; a preoccupation with motherhood, outsiders and religion

- Camilla Grudova, Telegraph

It’s no surprise that Pedro Almodóvar’s <i>The Last Dream</i> is <b>instantly fascinating, brimming with twisting narratives and unforgettable endings</b>—Almodóvar has given us three decades of such stories on the big screen. <b>What’s more surprising, what’s actually thrilling, is witnessing this major artist fully flourish in a totally new medium.</b> The characters feel as vivid and complex as anyone I might call to talk about them. Their resentments fester and erupt. They orbit - clumsily, hilariously, tragically - epiphanic moments of emotional and psychosexual clarity. There’s a Borgesian uncanny braided throughout - <b>like Borges, Almodóvar’s mind seems to be reporting from another world to illuminate, clarify, and challenge our own</b>. This is not auxiliary fiction from a film director; <b><i>The Last Dream s</i>tands alone as a major literary talent’s virtuosic debut</b>

Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!