Cities, fidelity, homosexuality, cowardice, vengeance, loss of identity, the love of books, smuggling and orphanhood are some of the themes that comprise this extraordinary book, whose backdrop is always the war. As he has done in previous works, Antón Riveiro Coello puts his characters in extreme situations to show us both the best and the worst of ourselves. Challenging stories that force us to look in the mirror and consider the role we might play in conflicts as diverse as those featured in these stories. And it doesn’t matter whether the war plays out in Ukraine, Syria, Russia, Vietnam or the border between Galicia and Portugal. The important thing about these stories is moving result of powerful writing which, once again, strips the characters bare and leaves them in a period of trouble that could well be our own.