La Babilonia, 1580 / The Babylon, 1580

AFTER 1793 AND THE BEAST ARRIVES THE GREAT NOVEL THAT RENEWS THE NOIR GENRE AND THE HISTORICAL NOVEL. A MONUMENTAL THRILLER SET IN SEVILLE IN 1580 AND A SECRET THAT COULD CHANGE THE COURSE OF HISTORY.

Seville, 1580. The city has become the main port for trade to the Indies and, therefore, the commercial capital of the Occident. His Majesty’s Fleet of the Indies is about to set sail the skin torn from a woman’s face and her red hair appear attached like a macabre disguise on the figurehead of the Capitana, the warship that leads the fleet. In the Arenal, in an area enclosed by high walls in the centre of a labyrinth of streets there is La Babilonia, the most sought-after brothel in the whole city. A few metres further on, the convent of the Discalced Carmelites founded by Teresa de Jesús. Behind these walls live the protagonists of this story: Damiana, a prostitute of renown, and Sister Catalina. The two friends that grew up together until life abruptly separated them will have to find out who murdered the redhead so brutally and why. To do so, they will put their lives in danger and the crown’s best kept secret, a mysterious map carved in wood that could change the course of history.

Susana Martín Gijón, a veteran of the noir genre and author of the successful Camino Vargas series, with more than sixty thousand copies sold, surprises us with a historical thriller based on the recent investigation, exciting and revealing, that could change the whole story about the discovery of America, with echoes of the sensory reading experience of Süskind’s Perfume and the dizzying and hypnotic plot of 1793 by Niklas Natt och Dag.