The Painter of Battles

Andrés Faulques is a world-renown war photographer, retired to a tower atop Spain's Cala del Arráez, where he is painting a large mural on the inside walls and reminiscing on conversations with his missing colleague (and girlfriend), Olvido, about the changing art of chronicling war?from paintings to photographs.

As he reflects, Faulques is unpleasantly surprised by a visitor, the brooding and disconsolate Ivo Markovic. They first met in a war-torn town in the Balkans, when Faulques photographed Markovic, then a wounded and shell-shocked student recently mobilized for the Croatian Army. Markovic challenges Faulques to remember the intense photograph, a picture for which Faulques had won the prestigious Europa Focus award, and for which Markovic experienced some fame, and much peril. Markovic has come to kill him, but not before making sure Faulques understands his story?that he is more than just a snapshot for a magazine cover, that he is part of a tragedy-stricken, hope...