Love and war in the Aegean Sea: an impossible passion and a fierce torpedo boat on loan from the Nazis are the premises in Arturo Pérez-Reverte's new novel.

The writer presents 'La isla de la mujer dormida,” a story of modern-day privateers during the Spanish Civil War, in a Greek island setting.

The boat moves swiftly in the Aegean between a maze of islands on a sea that mirrors like silver and a rapturous sky of pure blue. Suddenly we hit two bumps, spraying the sides of the hull with foam. It is as if we had initiated an attack on an enemy ship and launched a torpedo.

The writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte gives a shark's grin. You can almost imagine that he has lowered his fist to order the launching of the lethal metal catfish in the same way that Miguel Jordán Kyriazis, the Kapetanios Mihalis, the protagonist of his new book, “La isla de la mujer dormida” (Alfaguara), a thrilling novel of adventure, love and war, set in Greece at the time of the Spanish Civil War.

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