The second volume of the Diaries of Rafael Chirbes, which brings together various notebooks written between 2005 and 2007. These are the years of the slow gestation, full of doubts that even lead him to consider abandoning literature, of the novel that would mean his definitive consecration: Crematorium. They are also the years of personal uncertainties of work that gives him a new freedom; of friends who die; of transitory sexual encounters, between desire and decrepitude, because the body is no longer young; of growing disappointments… But the usual enthusiasms are still very much alive: the classic films, which bring moments of happiness, and the tireless, sagacious, and varied readings.