"Andrés Barba needs no introduction. He has his own intentional world perfectly contained and a literary gift that belies his age." —Mario Vargas Llosa"A story that has been described as an explosive clash between Pavese's The Beautiful Summer and the adolescents of Gus van Sant's Elephant."—Daniel Entrialgo, Esquire"A new Spanish great, that's all I need to say." —LireFourteen-year-old Tomás goes with his well-off family on their usual seaside summer holiday, but he is at a stage in his life when nothing is the same. Sullenly detached from them, full of confused intimations of sexuality, he is also faced with death when his widowed aunt, who lives in the resort, is taken seriously ill. As he becomes close to her on her deathbed he frequents the forbidden in the form of some lower-class village kids—casually transgressive boys and even more alien, sexually knowing girls—that will get him...

A collection of four novellas—"Fatherhood," "Guile," "Fidelity" and "Shopping"—where intense loneliness and desire guide an alienated cast of characters. In these poignant depictions of repression and guilt Barba captures existential mystery in seemingly banal moments of domestic strife, family tension, and romantic entanglements.

"Wholly compelling." —Colm TóibínA new novel from a Spanish literary star about the arrival of feral children to a tropical city in Argentina, and the quest to stop them from pulling the place into chaos. San Cristóbal was an unremarkable city—small, newly prosperous, contained by rain forest and river. But then the children arrived. No one knew where they came from: thirty-two kids, seemingly born of the jungle, speaking an unknown language. At first they scavenged, stealing food and money and absconding to the trees. But their transgressions escalated to violence, and then the city's own children began defecting to join them. Facing complete collapse, municipal forces embark on a hunt to find the kids before the city falls into irreparable chaos. Narrated by the social worker who led the hunt, A Luminous Republic is a suspenseful, anguished fable that "could be read as Lord of the...

An aging gay man fixates on the age difference between him and his younger lover. A runner threatens to ruin his marriage training for a marathon. A high school girl starves herself in an attempt to disappear. In four tightly wound novellas, Andrés Barba explores the limits of a single, destructive obsession.

“Every once in a while a novel does not record reality but creates a whole new reality, one that casts a light on our darkest feelings. Kafka did that. Bruno Schulz did that. Now the Spanish writer Andrés Barba has done it with the terrifying Such Small Hands."—Edmund WhiteLife changes at the orphanage the day seven-year-old Marina shows up. She is different from the other girls: at once an outcast and object of fascination. As Marina struggles to find her place, she invents a game whose rules are dictated by a haunting violence. Written in hypnotic, lyrical prose, alternating between Marina's perspective and the choral we of the other girls, Such Small Hands evokes the pain of loss and the hunger for acceptance.