"Las efímeras is a novel that is foreign to literary fashions, to the dictatorship of today and to the styles that are ‘hype’."
——BABELIA

"Reading Las efímeras, I felt what Emily Dickinson must have felt when she said, ‘If I feel physically as if the top of my head were removed, I know that is poetry.’ There is little else I can add in reference to this unforgettable novel."
——Estado Crítico

★English transaltion rights sold.
★One of the 10 Best Novels of the Year listed by the critics.
★Booksellers Recommend Book of the Year.
★A novel about domination, dependence and the desire to monopolize and control the life of those close to us. All this immersed in an invasive, suffocating nature from which it is very difficult to escape.

Dora and Violeta Oliver, two sisters with an ambiguous relationship, live isolated in a house located on the outskirts of La Ruche, a community in the middle of a dense forest. Their members gather on the site around a house that resembles the shape of a beehive, searching a lifestyle of recess and self-sufficiency, coherence and introspection.

As life goes on dominated by an omnipresent nature that also sets its own rules, Dora tries to control Violeta’s life. When she eats, what she wears. That is her idea of love. She ends up locking Violeta up in a shed to prevent her from meeting Denis, a mysterious boy who terrifies her.

One day, Violeta disappears and the normal life that Dora has tried to build falls apart. She has no choice but to ask for help to Anita, the descendant of the founders of La Ruche, still in charge of the community. But Anita is also haunted by her own past.

Among insects, earth and a dense mass of vegetation, a peaceful life is supposed to develop. But that idyllic way of life can become an oppressive and terrifying trap, provided the reader dares to look behind and see what it hides.

Pilar Adón

She was born in Madrid in 1971. Galaxia Gutenberg published the novels Las efímeras in 2015 and the awarded De bestias y aves in 2022, and the book of stories La vida sumergida in 2017. In 2003 appeared her first novel Las hijas de Sara and in 2005 she received the Premio Ojo Crítico, of Radio Nacional de España (RNE), for her book of stories Viajes inocentes. In 2010 it was published her volume of stories El mes más cruel, for which she was named FNAC Talent. Adón is also the author of Eterno amor, an illustrated nouvelle (2021), and the collections of poems Da dolor, Las órdenes, Mente animal and La hija del cazador (2020, 2018, 2014 and 2011). She has translated works of fiction and essays from English into Spanish (Penelope Fitzgerald, John Fowles, Henry James, Edith Wharton...). Some of her stories and poems have been translated into English, French, Serbian, Rumanian, Czech, Polish, Albanian and Korean.

* Ojo Crítico Prize (Radio Nacional de España)
* New FNAC Talent for El mes más cruel.
* Book of the Year by the Madrid Booksellers Guild for Las órdenes
* XII Francisco Umbral Prize for Best Book of the Year
* XXII Cálamo Award (category La otra mirada)
* National Critics Award 2022
* National Literature Award 2023