Casas left his hometown of Nîmes, France in 1975 for Salamanca, Spain, at 16. He is one of the first French bullfighters, and over the years became a renowned manager, a tournament organizer, and a dominant figure in the bullfighting world. Through memory-filled diary entries he explains the macho world of bullfighting on levels spiritual, physical, personal and historical. The bullfighting season begins, like sap rising, in February, and lasts until September. During the year covered in the diary (2002), Casas is managing an extremely gifted bullfighter named Cesar Jimenez. Between reminiscences at once poignant and entertaining, he touches on the poetry of the fight: a dialogue between man and beast, a political theater, and man’s battle with fear itself.

This is a memoir not only of a life in bullfighting, but of a life lived to its fullest metaphysical bounds.