After Martin Luther King was assassinated, Ray was able to escape with a fake passport, and as he moved from one country to another, he kept reading the newspapers, delighted to see his name on the list of the FBI''s "ten most dangerous criminals." His journey finally lands him in Lisbon, where he spends ten days waiting for a visa to enter Angola. But Lisbon was also the city that inspired Antonio Muñoz Molina, his most famous novel, and when he now decided to write a novel about Ray, the city became witness to three alternating stories: a murderous man on the run from justice, a writer struggling to find his literary voice, and the writer himself. Thirty years later, he reflects on his life, the life of his hero, and the form of the novel in which he tries to imagine the world with the consciousness of another man. In As a Shadow Departs, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2018, Molina writes a captivating, powerful, and detailed novel, integrating the fictional event with how it is written about.
