The Stars - by Carlos Maleno (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A work of pitch-black noir, set in a Spanish underworld where crime, art, and metaphysics meet.

It begins with a photograph.

Photojournalist Kevin Carter slips away from a party at a luxury villa and stumbles upon a lifeless teenaged girl floating in a swimming pool. Rather than call for help, he waits patiently until she drifts into just the right spot, then snaps the photo of a lifetime. Days later, that image hits the wire and makes the front page of every newspaper in the world.

Then, Kevin turns up dead himself, supposedly by suicide. And soon after, stories of more dead girls start to circulate. When Kevin's colleagues Jordi and Joao try to pick up the threads he left behind, they take their own long, strange journey into the dark.

For fans of Roberto Bolaño and Michel Houellebecq, The Stars is Carlos Maleno's best and most ambitious novel yet.

Review Quotes

About the Author

Carlos Maleno is a short-story writer, novelist, and sales broker for a produce company in Almería, Spain, the place of his birth and his current residence. His debut, The Irish Sea (Dalkey, 2017), won Spain's Argaria Prize for Best Narrative Work in 2014.

Eric Kurtzke is a translator. He graduated with a BA in English Literature from the University of Notre Dame. He has worked as an assistant editor for Dalkey Archive. He is now working on a number of translations from Spanish. His translation of Maleno's The Irish Sea was shortlisted for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize in 2018. Don't miss his translation of Alberto Olmos's short story "Every Last One, Place and Date," in Best European Fiction 2019 (Dalkey Archive). Eric Kurtzke is based in Falls Church, Virginia.