When Darkness Falls

One orphanage ward grows up and takes revenge on everyone who abandoned him. A cunning thief steals a painting he wants to steal. One book watches from a shelf as one future Nobel laureate goes mad on the day of his long-awaited triumph. One writer composes a novel and threatens the publisher to kill himself if the book isn’t printed. One former soldier, already completely lost in his mind, can’t stop replaying a lost battle and the deaths of his comrades on the battlefield.

Jaume Cabré (born 1947) is the biggest star of Catalan literature; his books have been translated into dozens of languages, with print runs exceeding a million copies, and his epochal novel “I Confess” has won numerous awards. “When Darkness Comes” is a dazzling kaleidoscope in which stories of cruelty, stupidity, anger, greed, misunderstandings, and miscommunication—terrible and funny human souls, people caught in the grip of circumstances and passions—are mixed and intertwined. Here everyone has blood on their hands: each kills—accidentally or on purpose, at the call of the soul, by duty or, supposedly, by necessity—in reality or in dreams… and it’s hard to find even a single completely innocent victim. When darkness comes, everyone will be guilty.