In this world of haste, sensational messages and agitation, it is appropriate to calmly cultivate the garden of our readings. Sometimes a refuge is the best window to the world. I listen to the news, read, go out and recommend books as a way to say goodbye. As work and worries pile up, taking life seriously means finding time to read and hang out with friends.
Reading under the robes (Tusquets, 2025), the book by the public prosecutor Carlos Castresana, now a member of the Court of Auditors and United Nations commissioner for human rights, demonstrates with his narrative ability how much the courts of justice have to do with literature. If a literary creation tries to tell everyone’s story by entering the lives of its characters, an experiment also involves entering the lives of some characters to make decisions that affect everyone’s lives. Carlos Castresana publishes a beautiful book of short stories telling us true historical cases that span the centuries through robberies, murders and other infamies. And each case captures us in reading and reminds us of everything that is at stake when it comes to telling life, talking about its protagonists, its victims and that judge that we all have inside us, even when we look out the window or when we look in the mirror.
This is a current book. He invites us to respect justice in its due measure. Doing justice is difficult because it is a profession that interferes in the lives of others. Mistakes and successes have consequences that fill every word and every argument with responsibility. And it is also clear that throughout history, personal decency matters in every context. There are those who seek the truth and those who adapt, for convenience or personal interest, to lies. The book recalls that the dagger of assassins is sometimes hidden under the robes of jurists.
