HERRALDE PRIZE 2020 - Approximately half of us confess to being sexually unfaithful to our partners. But are the other half telling the truth or are they lying?
There is only one way to find out: use private detectives or electronic surveillance to observe their lives. This novel proposes an anthropological experiment: to monitor six thousand people without their consent, so that we finally have reliable data about sexual behaviour in our societies.
Irene, the novel’s protagonist, is searching for the secrets of the human soul in our sexuality. She travels from Madrid to Chicago to study psychology, and there, far from her family, she embarks upon a scientific analysis of the men she meets and the men she sleeps with. Her cold investigator’s gaze changes, however, when she falls in love with an Argentinian, Claudio, who has a painful secret and whose family has a dark past linked to his country’s history.
Cien noches is a novel about the human heart, an exploration of our erotic lives, and the tale of police attempts to track down a murderer who has left no trace of his crime. Cien noches explores the different forms love can take, including its most radical and extreme versions, and the variety of our sexual behaviours, some of which are similarly radical and extreme. It records the loyalty, the infidelity, the unmentionable desires, taboos, half-truths and deceptions that are an essential part of our relationships. It talks of masks and lies. And it playfully incorporates a series of adultery case studies written for Luisgé Martín by Edurne Portela, Manuel Vilas, Sergio del Molino, Lara Moreno and José Ovejero, in a thought-provoking exercise in literary promiscuity.