"In her most thoughtful novel to date, Rosa Montero brilliantly combines intrigue and imagination with personal insight into human nature.”--Javier Escudero, World Literature in Review "Intent on shaking the foundations of beauty and truth, Bella y oscura provides a provocative feminist indictment of Francoist historiography.”--Mary C. Harges, Synergy and Subversion in the Second Stage Novels of Rosa Montero Combining elements of the real and the fantastic, Beautiful and Dark (Bella y oscura) is written from the perspective of Baba, an orphaned girl taken to live with relatives in a neighborhood called El Barrio. Trying to cope with the mystery and violence of the adult world around her, she is drawn to the Lilliputian Airelei, who fascinates Baba with her fantastic tales that mix myth and memory. Born in Madrid in 1951, Rosa Montero has been a journalist for Madrid's daily newspaper El País since 1976. She has published eight novels, many of which have been bestsellers in Spain. Montero's novel La hija del canibal (1997) won Spain's most prestigious literary award, the Premio Primavera de Novela. Adrienne Mitchell is a literary translator and tenured professor who holds an MEd in educational leadership with a focus on second language acquisition and pedagogy, as well as an MA in romance languages from the University of Oregon.