It is the summer of 1936, the early months of the agonising civil war that engulfs Spain and shakes the rest of the world. Many years later in post-Franco Spain, a survivor of that period, Doctor Daniel da Barca, returns from exile to his native Galicia, and the threads of past memories begin to be woven together.

Manuel Rivas was born in A Coru¿a in 1957. He writes in the Galician language of north-west Spain. He is well known in Spain for his journalism, as well as for his prize-winning short stories and novels, which include the internationally acclaimed The Carpenter's Pencil and Books Burn Badly. His most recent novel, All is Silence, will be published in English in 2013. His works have been translated into twenty languages.