The Last House Before the Sea: One Year on the Ebro Delta

A year spent at the precipice of severe climate change in oceanfront Spain.

The Last House Before the Sea is the magnificent result of a year lived on the island of Buda, contemplating the passing of the seasons, the marshes, the seabirds, and a relentless horizon. In its pages, Gabi Martínez stitches scenes of the natural world alongside the day-to-day lives of this unique island's residents, many of whom have called it home for generations. But something disrupts the slow rhythms of eel fishing, rice farming, and the Ebro River's flow to the coast. Something is shifting.

As climate change tilts the scales of a fragile coexistence, and rising sea levels threaten to swallow their homes, the island's locals must reconcile their past and future--both beholden to a region that grows more endangered with each passing day.

Gabi Martínez is the author of eleven fiction and non-fiction books. He is well-known for his outstanding travel writing and literary journalism, and his novels have been selected as books of the year by Spanish literary magazine Qué Leer. Martinez was included in Palgrave/Macmillan's list of the top five writers of Spanish Vanguardism in the last 20 years.

Ezra E. Fitz has translated over twenty books, including narrative nonfiction by Grammy winning musician Juanes and Emmy winning journalist Jorge Ramos, as well as literary fiction by Alberto Fuguet and Eloy Urroz. His translation of Forgiveness by Chiquis Rivera became an instant New York Times bestseller. Fitz served as an instructor with the University of Illinois' Program in Applied Translation, delivered lectures at Iowa, NYU, Tufts, and Vanderbilt among other institutions, and provided all translation services to Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán: Drug Baron, a joint scripted TV miniseries for Netflix/Univisión Story House. He has been awarded grants from the Mexican National Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA), he was a 2010 Resident at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, and a 2019 Peter Taylor Fellow with the Kenyon Review Literary Translation Workshop. He lives with his wife and two children in Spring Hill, Tennessee.