The best-written translated crime novel of the year
Read the opening pages below
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My name is Estela. Can you hear me? I said: Es-te-la-Gar-cÃ-a.
I don’t know if you’re recording this or taking notes or if there’s anyone even over there. But if you can hear me, if you are there, then I want to propose a deal: I’m going to tell you a story, and when I get to the end, when I stop talking, you’re going to let me out of here.
Hello? Nothing?
I’ll take your silence as a yes.
This story has several beginnings. I’d go as far as to say it’s made up of beginnings. But tell me: what defines a beginning? Explain to me, for example, whether night comes before day or day before night. Whether we wake because we went to sleep or sleep because we woke up. Or better, to keep things simple, just tell me where a tree begins: in the seed or the fruit around it? Or perhaps it’s in the branch that grew the flower that turned into the fruit? Or in the flower itself? Are you with me? Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
The same goes for causes, they’re just as unclear as beginnings. The cause of my thirst or hunger, for example. The cause of my current confinement. One cause sets off another, one card brings down the next. The only given is the ending: nothing’s left standing. And the end of this story – are you sure you want to know? – is this:
The girl dies.
Hello? No reaction at all?
Let me say it again in case a fly buzzed in your ear. Or perhaps you were put off by a sharper, shriller thought than my voice:
The girl dies. Did you hear this time? The girl dies and she’s still dead, no matter where I begin.
But death isn’t so simple either, that much I’m sure we can agree on. Deaths are a little like shadows: they differ in length and breadth from person to person, creature to creature, tree to tree. No two shadows on the earth’s surface are the same, and no two deaths are either. Every lamb, every spider, every chincol dies in its own way.
Take rabbits, for example … stay with me, it’s important. Have you ever held a rabbit in your hands? It’s like cradling a grenade, a velvety time bomb. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Rabbits are the only creatures on earth that are regularly scared to death. If a rabbit picks up a fox’s scent or senses a snake nearby, its heart starts racing and its pupils dilate. The adrenaline is like a hammer to the heart and the rabbit dies before the predator can sink its fangs into its neck. It’s fear that kills it, you see? Sheer anticipation. All within a fraction of a second the rabbit realises it’s going to die, glimpses how and when. And this conviction, this foretelling of its imminent end, is its death sentence.
It doesn’t happen like that for house sparrows or cats, lizards or bees. And what to say about plants: the death of a willow or hydrangea, an ulmo or winter’s bark. Or the end of a fig tree, with its cement-like solid grey trunk. It would take a very powerful cause to kill a hardy fig. A deadly fungus slowly spreading through its branches until eventually, after decades, the tree’s roots rot away. Or a handsaw hacking it down and chopping its trunk into firewood.
Every species, every living creature on the planet must find its own proper cause of death. A sufficient reason. One capable of crushing a life. And life, as you know, clings to some bodies. It fights back, thriving and dogged, and won’t be easily prised away. For that you need the appropriate tool: soap for a stain, tweezers for a thorn. Can you hear me over there? Are you paying attention? A fish can’t drown underwater. And a fishhook will barely scratch the roof of a whale’s mouth. But you can’t overdo death either; you can’t die in excess.
I am getting to the point, don’t worry. This is the edge of the story, and it’s right to hang back at the edge before diving in. It’s right that you understand how I came to be locked up, the events that led me here. And for you to glimpse, piece by piece, the girl’s cause of death.
I’ve killed before, it’s true. I promise not to lie to you. I’ve killed flies and moths, chickens, worms, a fern and a rose bush. And a long time ago, out of pity, I killed a wounded piglet. On that occasion I did feel sad, but I killed it because it was dying. It was dying a slow and painful death, so I got there first.
But those deaths don’t interest you. They’re not what you want to hear about. Don’t worry, I’ll get to the point, to the longed-for cause of death. A fistful of pills, a plane crash, a noose slung around a neck – some people survive against all the odds. For them the task of dying isn’t so easy. Men who need to be mown down by a lorry or have a bullet pumped into their chest. Women who jump from the sixth floor because the fifth wouldn’t cut it. For others, though, all it takes is a case of pneumonia, or a chill, or a fruit stone lodged in their throat. And for a very rare few, like the girl, just an idea will do. A lethal idea, born in a moment of weakness. I’ll tell you about that idea, about when it came to her. Now stop what you’re doing and listen to me.
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The shortlist for the 2025 Dagger Award for best translated crime novel
Dogs and Wolves by Herve Le Corre, translated by Howard Curtis
Going To The Dogs by Pierre Lemaitre, translated by Frank Wynne
The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani, translated by Sam Bett
The Clues in the Fjord by Satu Rämö, translated by Kristian London
Butter by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton
Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán, translated by Sophie Hughes
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