Cold Skin

The Japanese pihlosopher Musashi once said that only a select few appreciate the art of war.  Gruner is one of them.  The battle is defensive at night.  Amorous forays with the mascot fill his days.  And it is hard to tell which of the two activities impassions him most.

That is from Albert Sanchez Piñol’s Cold Skin, a Catalan novel which is well known in Europe (I discovered it browsing a Swiss bookstore) but obscure in the United States.  It captivated me right away.  I cannot quite call it science fiction, but I would recommend it to science fiction and horror fans who are looking for something serious and conceptual and literary, and who feel that only scraps remain on the table…