Diana

A short-lived affair leaves a man questioning his identity in this intense novel based on the prize-winning author's relationship with actress Jean Seberg.

On New Year's Eve in 1969, a novelist in his forties meets the beautiful movie actress Diana Soren at a party and is fascinated by her oddly elusive charm. But his infatuation turns into doomed pursuit as the fleeting object of his desire spurns him, and he is forced to reconsider the foundations of his life as a writer.

"Fuentes's [Diana], which seems to be semi-autobiographical, grapples with a double nostalgia—for a love affair and for the bygone era of the 1960s. . . . Real-life figures such as William Styron and Luis Buñuel make memorable appearances, and the author's ironic, kindly take on his younger alter ego is affecting." —Publishers Weekly

"The narrative is marked by digressions into Sixties revolutionary politics, the meaning of literary creation, and the Puritan origins of the United States. But these never distract from the central themes of the novel—the hunger with which Diana and Carlos consume each other, the tragic link between the eternity of desire and the finitude of love; the wish to create and the inexorable will to destroy. . . . A strange blend of fact and fiction." —Library Journal