A Painter of Battles

Novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte draws on his experience as a war reporter in Lebanon, Bosnia, Libya and elsewhere for his latest book, A Painter of Battles. Lorraine Adams reviews it for the New York Times,

The hero of “The Painter of Battles,” Andrés Faulques, lives in a 300-year-old tower on the Spanish coast. A war photographer for 30 years, he’s been everywhere: “Cyprus, Vietnam, Lebanon, Cambodia, Eritrea, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Iraq, the Balkans.” Why did he give up his career to paint a mural on the walls of his tower? Because he couldn’t find, through the lens, “the definitive image; the both fleeting and eternal moment that would explain all things,” “the hidden rule that made order out of the implacable geometry of chaos.” link