Today I’m happy to recommend this very special novel. Not only because the author is, besides being a writer, a collaborator and one of my best friends, but also because, knowing her, I know she has written this novel from a place of love. And María José wants to give a voice to a subject—cognitive disorders—that more and more people suffer from, and at increasingly younger ages. Therefore, we all need to know how to deal with them, and it’s not easy, I assure you. With books like this, we can help younger generations approach this “problem,” which leaves no one indifferent, and help those of us who are older—who may also enjoy this novel—continue moving forward with a new perspective, using imagination as an ally to reinvent that lost memory.

The Kingdom of Oblivion, by M.J. Bausá, winner of the 2025 Jaén Prize for Young Adult Fiction, is one of those books you don’t just read — you live. A novel that intertwines fantasy and emotion to remind us that even when memory fades, imagination can be the doorway that leads us back to ourselves.

Since the death of his parents, Álex has been adrift, trapped between anger and confusion. When a judge sends him to do community service in a nursing home, it feels more like another sentence than an opportunity. But The Garden of the Innocent is no ordinary place. Among its quiet hallways and rooms filled with memories, Álex meets Ninon — a rebellious young girl who visits her grandmother Juliette — and the mysterious Cadaval, a director who seems to know far too much about his past.

What begins as punishment becomes an unexpected adventure. Because behind the home’s walls lies a kingdom where imagination is the only tool capable of uncovering the truth. A world that seems to have stepped straight out of the novels Álex’s mother used to write and that will slowly reveal a secret as painful as it is necessary: to remember who you are, you must first dare to dream.

With uncommon sensitivity, M.J. Bausá crafts a story about grief, loss, and the healing power of fantasy. Her prose is immersive, warm, and deeply human. The author — a geriatric nurse by training and a writer by vocation — pours into these pages her understanding of the human soul and of those invisible wounds that only empathy and imagination can mend.

The Kingdom of Oblivion is, at its heart, a tribute to memory: the kind preserved by the elderly, the kind carried by their children, the kind that is sometimes lost and other times reinvented so life can move forward. A novel that will appeal both to those seeking emotion and adventure and to those who enjoy stories read with a lump in the throat.

A book that invites us to look beyond forgetting and to believe, once again, in the power of stories to save us.