共 It is a cold, rainy December night, and Sibila is on a mission. She has left everything that might give away her location at home and rented a car in the name of a deceased person. Her destination is an island that lies several kilometres offshore. She has arranged for a guide to take her across at low tide. Because this is not a normal island, no one is allowed to spend the night there without special permission, it is subject to the strictest protective measures. It is designated as a vestige-place, a gaia-place, and only a small group of old people are allowed to live there, to keep the island spick and span for the tourists who arrive during the day. Sibila knows most of them. She knows them because she was raised on the island until her parents decided to move to the mainland when she was twelve. But what has brought her back to the island after an absence of some years? And why the need for so much secrecy? The narrative begins in the future and then immerses the reader in the past to elucidate the course of events. This is an incredibly rich text, with unusual metaphors, by one of Galicia’s foremost writers.
Rosa Aneiros is the author of numerous works of adult and young people’s literature. The novels Resistance, winner of the San Clemente Award, a love story set in the time of the Estado Novo in Portugal, and Butterfly Wings, winner of the Caixa Galicia Foundation Prize, about a cosmopolitan café in Santiago de Compostela, are also available in English, together with the trilogy I Love You Leo A., about a university graduate who goes off travelling, only to discover cryptic messages in all the places she visits.
