El caballero incierto

Rosa Montero's excellent novel, La carne [The Flesh], contains a small hidden gem.

It is the imaginary history of Josefina Aznárez, a formidable, passionate, magical character, one of those that appear very infrequently but stay with you forever.

Josefina is a luckless character, a forlorn and painful creation of the condition of being a woman. This woman could easily be Hildegard of Bingen, María Lejárraga or George Sand.

On 3 November 1893, her destiny crosses paths with the explosion and subsequent tragedy of the steamboat “Cabo Machichaco”.... From that point on, it is Laila Ripoll who writes this monologue. Josefina enters the shadows and disappears, to be transformed into a ghost, a myth, into stage fodder. To never, ever disappear.

This caballero incierto [uncertain gentleman] is a tribute to these brave, silenced and forgotten women. El caballero incierto is about us women and about our place in the world.