Synopsis

An American boy with impossible dreams is thrust into the cauldron of the Spanish Civil War in an arresting and thrilling historical coming-of-age epic by the author of The Palace at the End of the Sea.

Barcelona 1936. Theo helps the Anarchist workers defeat the army that is trying to overthrow the democratically elected government, and he is reunited with his true love, Maria. But all too soon, his joy turns to terror as the Anarchists turn on him, led by a rival for Maria’s affection.

Lucky to escape with his life, Theo returns to England to study at Oxford. But his heart is in Spain, now torn apart by a bloody civil war, and he is quick to abandon his new life when his old schoolmate Esmond offers him the chance to fight the Fascists. He is unprepared for the nightmare of war that crushes his spirit and his hope until, back in Barcelona, Theo is confronted with a final terrible choice that will define his life forever.

As Theo’s tumultuous coming-of-age journey reaches its end, can his dream to change the world—so far from home—still hold true?

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Q&A with Simon

Why is your novel called The Room of Lost Steps?

Because I got lucky!

In the summer of 2019, I spent a week in Barcelona doing research. I had a series of sites to see, but changed my schedule on the last day because my tour guide happened to mention that Antoni Gaudí’s architectural masterpiece, the Güell Palace, had been used as a communist prison or cheka during the Civil War.

As I passed through the wrought iron entrance archway and entered the cavernous lamplit vestibule, I felt a sense that I had left the world behind and that the palace was magical, turned in on itself, alive and watchful, in a way I had never experienced in any building before. And as I walked through the beautiful halls with their thick walls clad in ebony and rosewood, iron and stone, I felt a dawning certainty that this was where the climax to my book would play out. As if my characters already existed there, their footsteps echoing on the marble stairs just like mine.

Finally, I came to a sumptuously decorated rectangular room with an elaborately coffered oak ceiling and snake-like ornaments, separated by three marble columns from a narrow gallery overlooking the street below. I looked in my guidebook and saw that this was the room of lost steps, so called because it was where supplicants waited to be admitted to the great hall beyond, walking up and down, thinking of what might lie ahead. Lost steps trod on the threshold of success or despair. But I knew that for my hero, Theo, this would be where his story would end; this would be the room where Esmond, his schoolfriend turned communist secret policeman, would interrogate high value anarchist prisoners brought up from the basement stables turned dungeons down below. Prisoners that would include the girl that Theo loved.

All the rest of that day, I took measurements and made notes, filled with a sense of gratitude and wonder. I felt as if the palace and the room of lost steps had been waiting for me, even though that of course made no sense, because I had stumbled on them by virtue of a chance remark.

Back in America, the feeling stayed with me, and years later, when a friend read my book and suggested that The Room of Lost Steps should be its title, I knew immediately that she was right. Because it was the room where everything ended, and because of its mysterious name, and because it suggested the theme of loss and disillusionment that lies at the heart of Theo Sterling’s journey from boy to man.

What is the significance of the photograph on the cover?

The photograph of Barcelona from the 1930s was taken, looking across Plaça de Catalunya to the Passeig de Gràcia. On the left, at the corner of the square, stands the imposing Hotel Colón, which was demolished in 1940 and replaced with a bank. The luxury hotel plays a vital part in my novel and the rapid changes that occurred there in 1936 -7 are central to the hero, Theo Sterling’s experience.

Theo visits Barcelona for the first time in the summer of 1936, and stays in the hotel with his mother and stepfather, looking down from the windows of his room at crowds of well-dressed people walking among the statues and fountains. But his excitement turns to horror when he sees the terrible carnage in the square following the fighting for control of the city between the army rebels and the anarchist workers on July 19^th.

In the evening, he witnesses the bravery of the Civil Guard commander who succeeds in negotiating a ceasefire, enabling the besieged soldiers holed up in the hotel to be evacuated; and afterward, he spends the happiest days of his life with Maria, the anarchist girl he loves, staying in the same room, now pockmarked with bullet holes.

They experience together the heady first days of the anarchist revolution in the city, walking up the Passeig de Gràcia to the Ritz Hotel which has been turned into a meal kitchen for the poor, who are eating off monogrammed plates under sparking chandeliers. For a moment, Theo believes that the meek have inherited the earth, until he is forced to flee Barcelona, hunted by anarchist enemies using their new power to settle old scores.

He returns to the city the next year as an International Brigade soldier, only to find that the hotel has become the headquarters of his new master, the Communist party. A huge portrait of Stalin hangs down over the room where he was once so happy, and he has no answer to give when Maria tells him that “they take everything. Even you.”

Ninety years later, the Plaça de Catalunya is at the beating heart of the modern city of Barcelona, but many of those walking among the statues and fountains are unaware of the extraordinary events that once took place there, and which I have tried to bring to life in my novel.

About the Author

I live in Santa Barbara, California where the sky really is as blue as the deep blue sea most days, and I love the roar of the ocean, the majestic mountains, the white Spanish adobe architecture, and the twisting oaks and carpets of flowers in my yard where I walk with my beloved pug, Sadie, twice a day. It’s a long way from the sleepy Oxfordshire village where I grew up and the Catholic boarding school where I spent my teenage years.

I studied modern history at Trinity College, Oxford, and then reluctantly went to law school. I thought that I was putting my life in a straitjacket, but criminal law was a revelation. In the London prisons and police stations, I met people from every walk of life, and I became a barrister because I wanted to represent them in court, rather than just prepare their cases for trial. I loved the drama and responsibility of the work, but then at the age of forty-one, I decided to reinvent myself as a novelist, even though I had never written a word of fiction before! I am the grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien, and I think that his immense literary achievements had inhibited me up to then. I started with what I knew and wrote courtroom dramas, and then this developed into crime thrillers with historical settings, and finally character-driven historical fiction. I loved history as a child, and my novels have enabled me to recapture the sense of wonder I felt about the past as being another country, just as real as our own. My focus has been on the turbulent first fifty years of the 20^th century, and my settings have included the London Blitz, the Battle of the Somme, and now, in my forthcoming duology, New York in the Great Depression and the Spanish Civil War.

I have been so lucky to have been married for forty years to my wife, Tracy, who has encouraged me in all my creative endeavors. She is a writer herself and an expert on vintage fashion and jewelry, and we have two wonderful children, Nicholas and Anna.

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