Winner of the 2017 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
Winner of the 2019 Bernard Shaw Prize for its translation
At a run-down brothel in Caudal, Spain, the prostitutes are collecting
stray dogs. Each is named after a famous male writer: Dante, Chaucer,
Bret Easton Ellis. When a john is cruel, the dogs are fed rotten meat.
To the east, in Barcelona, an unflappable teenage girl is endeavouring
to trace the peculiarities of her life back to one woman: Alba Cambó,
writer of violent short stories, who left Caudal as a girl and never
went back.
Mordantly funny, dryly sensual, written with a staggering lightness of
touch, the debut novel in English by Swedish sensation Lina Wolff is a
black and Bolaño-esque take on the limitations of love in a dog-eat-dog
world.