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Almodóvar makes his novel debut with 'The Man Who Wrote Only on Aeroplanes'
Pedro Almodóvar will take a new step beyond cinema this autumn. In October, the director will publish his first novel, 'The Man Who Wrote Only on Aeroplanes', under the Reservoir Books imprint, a book that is generating anticipation among readers, film lovers and followers of one of the most recognisable voices in Spanish culture.
The story starts from a very Almodóvar-like idea because of its mix of chance, travel and identity. During a flight, the protagonist discovers that he has a talent for writing, and that discovery opens a plot marked by creation, displacement and the possibility of reinventing oneself far from solid ground.
The move into the novel does not come from nowhere. Almodóvar had already published a collection of stories in 2023, El último sueño, bringing together texts written over several decades. That book offered a glimpse of his literary world and a way of telling stories less dependent on the camera, but closely connected to his usual obsessions.
With this new work, the director expands a universe that has always been very close to literature. His films have built characters, dialogue and melodramas with a voice of their own, recognisable even away from the screen. That voice will now move into the long form of the novel.
The publication also arrives at a time when the boundaries between cinema, books and popular culture are increasingly porous. For many bookshops, the arrival of a novel signed by Almodóvar may attract regular readers as well as people approaching the book through his film career.
The title also plays with a very contemporary image: writing in transit, using a flight as a space for concentration and turning travel into a creative trigger. It is a simple premise, but one capable of connecting with those who associate journeys with pauses, memories or important decisions.
Pedro Almodóvar has shaped Spanish culture for decades through cinema, with a highly personal view of desire, family, memory and identity. His arrival at the novel does not erase that trajectory, but opens another door within a body of work that has always lived by telling stories.
The publication of “El hombre que solo escribía en los aviones” will be a cultural event of the autumn. Not only because of the curiosity of reading the novelist Almodóvar, but because it will show how his imaginative world transfers to a narrative form without actors, music or images, yet with all the force of his voice.