The Pain of Others: A Novel

In this blend of police thriller and poignant autofiction, a writer revisits a tragic crime from his adolescence and reckons with a dark, underexplored side of Spain.

On Christmas Eve 1995, Miguel Ángel Hernández’s best friend murdered his sister and took his own life by jumping off a cliff. It happened in a small hamlet in the Murcia countryside. No one ever knew why. The investigation was closed, and the crime forgotten.

20 years later, when the wounds seem to have stopped bleeding and the ...