El santo crucifijo

In this conclusion of her unprecedented literary project, Rachel Cusk explores the internal structures of human nature, questioning concepts such as family, love and art--but at the center is suffering and its meaning in our lives.

“La ciudad amurallada de Thinerck esconde algo más que una rosa dormida.” La noche del golpe que tan cuidadosamente habían planeado cambiaría sus vidas para siempre. Aunque Llyra, con toda su experiencia como miembro de la hermandad de los ladrones, nunca hubiese imaginado hasta qué punto. Una frenética huida, una violenta emboscada y la aparición inesperada de un huraño encapuchado serán solo el principio de un viaje que la llevará al territorio de las leyendas, y a recuperar lo que creía perdido de su propio pasado.

A family celebrates the moon landing in the garden of an old mansion. A murder that night shatters their fate. Years later, Helena Guerrero is a renowned artist, known for the mysterious shadows in her paintings. An email from her estranged brother-in-law helps her discover what happened that night in 1969.

"Since they shot her at point-blank range while she was being kissed, she confused the pain of love with that of death." Rosario Tijeras is the violent, violated character at the center of Jorge Franco's study of contrasts, set in self-destructing 1980s Medellín. Her very name-evoking the rosary, and scissors-bespeaks her conflict as a woman who becomes a contract killer to insulate herself from the random violence of the streets. Then she is shot, gravely wounded, and the circle of contradiction is closed. From the corridors of the hospital where Rosario is fighting for her life, Antonio,...