In 1967, shortly before Agustín Fernández Mallo was born, his father - a veterinarian from a village in León, and a firm believer in science and progress - travelled across the United States with the aim of bringing a herd of cows by plane to Galicia.

Almost half a century later, Fernández Mallo makes his own journey through the American heartland, attempting to retrace his steps before his father loses his memory.

Atom Heart Mother spans a century of Spanish history through a web of family stories and legends. A bracing intellectual elegy for a parent and for a world that is slowly slipping away, this chimerical work of historical reconstitution is Agustín Fernández Mallo, one of the most ambitious and original Spanish-language authors, at his best and his most personal.