The Last Dream

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024

Also available in audio featuring narration by Colman Domingo, Rachel Weisz, and Michael Cera.

“Instantly fascinating, brimming with twisting narratives and unforgettable endings… The Last Dream stands alone as a major literary talent’s virtuosic debut.” —Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!

“[A] real page turner.” —John Waters

Making his English language debut, the iconoclastic, two-time Academy award-winning writer and director reveals his singular mind as never before in this literary fiction collection of twelve remarkable stories spanning memoir, comedy, autofiction, parody, pastiche, and gothic fiction.

With this debut collection of translated fiction, film legend Pedro Almodóvar delivers a tantalizing glimpse into his world, formed by twelve stories carefully selected from his personal writings dating from the late ‘60s to the present. Almodóvar writes: “I’ve been asked to write my autobiography more than once, and I’ve always refused. . . . I’ve never kept a diary, and whenever I’ve tried, I’ve never made it to page two; in a sense, then, this book represents something of a paradox. It might be best described as a fragmentary autobiography, incomplete and a little enigmatic.”

Each entry in this collection of surreal stories reflects Almodóvar's most intimate obsessions, as well as his evolution as an artist. In the title story, “The Last Dream,” Almodóvar reflects on the death of his mother. Other entries in the collection include a love story between Jesus and Barabbas, a story of retribution that formed the basis for the film Bad Education, a manic adventure about a film director searching for painkillers on a bank holiday weekend, and a gothic tale centered around a repentant vampire.

Translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne