Rafael Sinclair Mahdavi

Villa Dolores Rafael Sinclair Mahdavi

Villa Dolores is the moving story of the making of a painter. After Rafael Sinclair Mahdavi's birth in Mexico his American mother and Iranian father moved to Mallorca. The author's island childhood was idyllic yet also crossed with violence and death. He later survived the brutality of European boarding schools. In Madrid his discovery of the paintings at the Prado became central to his coming of age as a painter, and as an exile from nowhere and everywhere. In Vienna when told he was about to die, he rejected the offer of last rites. Recovering in the Alps he lived a dramatic love affair. His educational odyssey ended when he returned to Villa Dolores for a last good bye. The story ends as he is about to leave for America at the start of the nineteen sixties.