About the book: 1975 / Delibes reflects on the social system and the need for its radical transformation in the novel "Five Hours with Mario" (1966), his most significant a work in which both his analytical gift and his fearless social criticism were fully revealed. According to Spanish custom, the deceased is not left overnight in an empty room. One of the loved ones must spend the night at the coffin, staying awake and guarding the eternal sleep of the deceased. The heroine of the novel Carmen spends such a night on the eve of the funeral at the coffin of her suddenly deceased husband. She had five hours left to be alone with Mario. Leafing through the family Bible, she, however, does not pray, but mentally turns to her husband for the last time, goes over the events of their life together, repeats the same reproaches, complaints, maxims that she probably repeated to him day after day when he was alive..