First published 2019
A man arrives in Lisbon to set up the apartment he and his wife have bought together. She remains in New York, finishing her neuroscience research on memory and fear. He enjoys the mild Portuguese weather and quiet streets as he plans their shared future room by room. The couple is leaving behind a difficult period shaped by 9/11, seeking a fresh start in this peaceful city. Yet as days pass, something begins to disturb him. He cannot name what troubles him about the routines he has built. The resemblance between their old apartment and this new one nags at him. An undefined threat seems to hover just beyond his awareness. His careful preparations start to feel less like hope and more like dread. Muñoz Molina reveals how memory and emotion warp what we think we see, how the stories we build about our lives can crack under pressure we never expected.
Genres: drama, literary-fiction, contemporary, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, introspective, melancholic, thought-provoking, unsettling
Tropes: displacement-and-alienation, slow-burn-dread, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Lisbon, New York, Portugal
Period: 21st-century, post-9-11
304 pages · Paperback · Other Press
Content warnings: anxiety, mental-illness