Andres Barba – författare

';A ghost story without ghosts that, beyond its formal elegance, explores loneliness, the cycles in which our lives revolve, and the immeasurable challenges of affection.'Mariana Enriquez, author of Our Share of Night

Quiet, strange, and deeply reflective. Booklist

In this contemporary ghost story, award-winning author Andres Barba eerily explores how the past can hold us captive, as a woman encounters a boy with an otherworldly stare in an empty house.

While eagerly preparing a house for prospective buyers, a woman finds herself face to face with a strange sight: a seven-year-old boy who doesn't blink. Seemingly appearing and disappearing before her again and again, he sooner resembles an apparition. But one thing is clear: the boy wants something from her. Choosing to leave her everyday world behind, the woman steps through the looking glass, inadvertently nurturing a disturbing co-dependence and discovering a suspended time, a loop, and another life in the process.

Containing all the elements of a perfect ghost story, Last Day of a Prior Life is a richly atmospheric, disturbing, and dazzling gem of a novel that calls to mind the gothic tales of Shirley Jackson and the fractured realities of Black Mirror. Winner of the Premio Finestres, Barba's latest demonstrates his exquisite talent for dissecting human intimacy and excavating the links between past and present, while delivering a masterful exploration of human longing and the ties that bind us, even across time itself.

Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman

A Guardian Best Book of 2017

“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 White

Life 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.