Stars

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.