Let’s stay in Spain a little longer, in the company of Jorge de Cascante. I discovered Jorge when I bought a different book of his, an anthology of short stories that he edited called The Big Book of Cats. I loved his introduction, both for his writing style, his humour and most of all his love of cats. Which I assumed to be all-consuming until I discovered he had also edited the anthologies The Big Book of Dogs and The Big Book of Satan. However, his collection An Entire City Bathed in Human Blood won me back around with its narratives both animal, human and somewhere in between. ‘The Gnomes’ is just two short pages, but takes us from Madrid’s Retiro park, to the suburbs of the capital, to a strange underworld of gnomes. It exemplifies how good de Cascante is at drawing us into a place human and otherwise. And he makes that seem very reasonable and natural. Which makes perfect sense to me.

Included in An Entire City Bathed in Human Blood, Blackie Books, 2022