Reality insists on changing the plans of novelist Richard Ford (Jackson, 1944). If a couple of years ago, coinciding with the publication of the fifth and last book starring Frank Bascombe, Be mine (2023; Sé mía in the Spanish translation published by Anagrama), he hinted that he was giving up writing, he is in Barcelona presenting a new work, How I got on (2026; En palabras sencillas in Spanish by Feltrinelli), an essay of about a hundred pages that starts with a stimulating question: how can we live decently in a world where politics tends to be dishonest?