For a Sack of Bones

This Ramon Llull Prize winner follows a Spanish Foreign Legion sergeant who returns to Franco's Barcelona with one grim mission: recover the bones of a man who protected his father in prison and give him a proper burial. Baulenas — writing in Catalan, a language Franco tried to eradicate — builds a tense, morally layered story around that simple vow. The plotting is brisk and the setting, post-Civil War Spain, is rendered with real menace. One honest caveat: the English-language critical record is thin, and characters beyond the protagonist feel underdeveloped. The subject matter is dark throughout — war, fascist repression, and death — so this is for mature adult readers comfortable with historical grimness. For those readers, it's a gripping, distinctive piece of European historical fiction.