The Pain of Others - by Miguel Ángel Hernández (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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 mourning died down, Miguel decides to return to the countryside and, putting himself in the shoes of a detective, tries to reconstruct that tragic night that marked the end of his adolescence. But travelling in time always means altering the past, and the investigation will awaken ghosts that he thought he had left behind: a childhood marked by the Church, by sin and guilt; the constant presence of illness and death; the oppressive, closed world from which he managed to escape.

This raw, moving novel about the collision of two worlds and two ways of life is a reckoning with the past and, above all, a subtle and incisive meditation on the ethics of literature, which makes us aware that "writing isn't always a triumph, that sometimes, we too may founder upon the pain of others."

Review Quotes

"The Pain of Others captures, more than any other recent book I've read, the ethical and moral quandaries of transforming trauma and tragedy into art. In a brilliant mixture of literature and reportage, Miguel Ángel Hernández writes movingly about the limits of memory and empathy and the downstream effects of a senseless act that ripped the fabric of family, community, and the author himself." --Sarah Weinman, author of The Real Lolita and Without Consent

"An absorbing book of unwavering honesty. A magnificent novel without fiction." --Javier Cercas, author of Soldiers of Salamis

"Unparalleled writing that breathes a chilling truth. Miguel Ángel Hernández has written his best book--and that's saying something. A must-read." --Agustín Fernández Mallo, author of The Nocilla Trilogy

"The author as host and guest in his own story. A mediation on writing, a friend who murders his sister then takes his own life, who appears out of the blue in a photograph, an investigation, a portrait of Spain in the 90s and, in short, an outstanding novel by Miguel Ángel Hernández." --Fernando Aramburu, author of Homeland

"A unique, powerful, and brutal novel." --Qué Leer

"A work as harrowing as it is empathetic--raw and beautiful." --Rockdelux

"A magnificent autobiographical text, full of pain and unanswered questions." --Les Inrockuptibles

"A moving book, written with exquisite intelligence and sensitivity. A treatise on inappropriate affections and the failure to understand evil when it appears in our communities and takes root in those we love--on empathy, the power of language, and its limits." --El País

About the Author

Miguel Ángel Hernández is a Spanish writer best known for his works of fiction, among them the novels Intento de escapada (2013), which won the Premio Ciudad Alcalá de Narrativa and was translated into five languages, El instante de peligro (2015), which was a finalist for the Premio Herralde de Novela, and El dolor de los demás (2018), which was selected as a book of the year by El País and the New York Times en Español. Hernández teaches art history at the University of Murcia and has authored several books on art and visual culture. His novel Anoxia was published by Other Press in 2025.

Adrian Nathan West is a writer and literary critic based in Spain. He has translated more than twenty books, among them Rainald Goetz's Insane and Sibylle Lacan's A Father: Puzzle.