A disquieting, haunting work, The Endless Rose begins when a one-legged woman’s manuscript is accepted by a small publishing house consisting of two friends. Stunned and excited by her writing, they invite her to visit them in the south of Spain.

The hypnotic, gut-wrenching events that follow—revolving around a brutal murder mentioned in the book’s first pages—are plunged into an atmosphere of dreams, violence, and bizarre coincidence.

Maleno has managed to distill a mash of Michel Houellebecq (who figures as a character here), Roberto Bolaño (The Endless Rose takes its title from a fictional novel mentioned in the Chilean’s posthumous masterpiece), and Enrique Vila-Matas (whose technique of textured allusion Maleno has mastered) into a strange brew that is all his own.