"Wakeful and on edge, I could see only the negative in this era. We were living in the realm of the fake. Man was subjected to the continuous pressure of advertising which dictated what he could do and what he should think. With every day that went by, we found it more difficult to form an opinion of our own. The possibility of freedom could be glimpsed only occasionally when advertising campaigns contradicted each other, but this also raised the spectre of a descent into chaos. We were being poisoned by words and there was no way back."
Part socio-political essay, part dystopian fiction, Andrea Víctrix presents a shockingly prescient vision of Palma, Mallorca in 2050. In comparing the anonymous narrator’s ‘traditional’ 1960s values with a future society that has done away with family and gender, Villalonga sets up an intriguing interplay between the narrator and the androgynous Andrea Víctrix, so-called Director of Pleasure, in a powerfully satirical, sometimes ironic exploration of contemporary issues such as gender and sexuality, consumerism, environmental disaster and the politics of big business.
