Books from Spain

In this intimate, lyrical novel, a young Spanish writer navigates the overlapping experiences of grief, desire, and complicated love. When twenty-eight-year-old Sara moves from London to Barcelona for a university teaching position, she leaves behind her long-term girlfriend while beginning an intense affair with a woman she calls Girl. At the same time, her mother is dying of cancer in Asturias, forcing Sara to confront the approaching loss of one of the most important relationships in her life. As these emotional worlds collide, she struggles with guilt, longing, and the impossibility of controlling either her own desires or the people she loves. Blending fiction with philosophical reflection, Torres explores the body as a site of pleasure, vulnerability, and suffering. Her prose moves between intimate encounters and meditations on attachment, sexuality, and mortality, capturing the messy contradictions of being human. X Is Where I Am is ultimately a moving exploration of how we continue to love amid loss—and how grief can transform our understanding of ourselves and our relationships.