El responsable de las ranas

(France, Belfond); (Italy, Feltrinelli); (Germany, Paul List); (Greece, Selas); (Holland, Menken, Kassander & Wigman)

-Ciudad de Barcelona Award

-Ojo Crítico Prize

«Zarraluki’s qualities continue to appear in this novel. The concepts are established with virtuosity, the imagery is always accurate, concise and disturbing. It is a pleasure to read how people tell one another about themselves, and also to see how the fine humour that is ultimately assured on the dust jackets of all novels, actually exists in this one.» Guillem Martínez

(Head of the Frogs) The main character, a writer of short, yet strange biographies, survives in a ramshackle hut. In the broad landscape that provides the view, smoking factories and rubbish tips make it difficult for him to feel in the countryside. But this character is rescued by love: a woman who likes coffee and pills shuts herself away with him in his unfinished world and together they give themselves over to the pleasant world that Rabelais preached of. However, things start to crumble all around them pretty virulently. Written in the code of a comedy with perplexed lucidity and macabre irony, this account of paradise develops with muffled belly laughs. The result is the obstinate discovery of melancholy. Among so many apparently intelligent people, only the frogs, trenched in their stinking ponds, seem to understand that there is no story that ends well as long as it is drawn out long enough.

-Ciudad de Barcelona Award

-Ojo Crítico Prize

(Spain, Anagrama); (France, Belfond); (Italy, Feltrinelli); (Germany, Paul List); (Greece, Selas); (Holland, Menken, Kassander & Wigman)