The Time In Between (Sira Quiroga, #1)

by María Dueñas

During this awkward encounter, in which they spoke through an interpreter and without the possibility of any proper dialogue, Hoare was struck by just how disconcertingly self-confident the head of state was—he possessed the smugness of a man who believed himself to have been chosen by Providence to rescue his country and create a new world.

And as the former high commissioner’s star plummeted like a stone in water, Franco and Serrano, Serrano and Franco, two men with absolutely no knowledge of international politics, neither of whom had barely seen anything of the world, sat down to drink hot chocolate with fried bread in El Pardo and sketched out a new global order on the teatime tablecloth with the shocking audacity that can only come from ignorance and overweening pride.