One of the great attractions of learning a foreign language – especially one your parents don’t speak – is that feeling of a door opening onto secret territory.
Suddenly the hours spent poring over grammar books and verb tables yield their reward: here is a new world of landscapes, characters, sights and sounds one need not share with immediate family and friends.
I have a bad memory for fiction, but the first Spanish novels I read, at about fifteen, have stayed with me better than English novels read at the same time. Thanks to those books, I travelled to Spain long before actually setting foot on Spanish soil.