#RivetingReviews: Rosie Goldsmith reviews FAR by Rosa Ribas, translated by Charlotte Coombe

‘That night, he had no idea he was walking over a cemetery. A secret cemetery with no gravestones or crosses, and only two dead bodies. There would be three by the time he left.’

These are the opening lines of a compulsive novel, the first translated into English by Spanish author Rosa Ribas, which maintains its eerie and compelling hold over you until the end. The subject matter may be bizarre, the protagonists may be strange loners, but the clever, restrained writing – and flawless translation – is sophisticated and arresting. Rosa Ribas understands her characters and their circumstances profoundly well.

The novel takes place in an unnamed Spanish ‘new town’ in the countryside, far away from the capital (we assume Madrid) and far away from everything, started by a swashbuckling developer during the building boom of the 1990s but abandoned, only partly completed, as a result of the economic crash of 2008. Intended as a sparkling new beginning for thousands of new owners of all incomes and social backgrounds, in the present day of this novel the new town and residential housing are hollow shells of an extravagant dream. Today, precisely 262 residents inhabit the modern, well-appointed villas with their manicured gardens. The vacant, unfinished housing blocks just streets away are inhabited by rats, fugitives, criminals, squatters, settlers, illegals, losers – they are given many names.

‘The entire development was constructed on a pile of poorly concealed sleaze, a chain of bribery, corruption, intimidation, and complicit silences. No ancient manuscripts, no mythical foundations … It was a bleak place, devoid of stories, where it was impossible to satisfy any yearnings for greatness.’

Even here, in the middle of this barren nowhere, the few inhabitants show little sign of community, kindness or neighbourliness. They watch each other carefully, report anything unusual (yes, anything) to the residents’ association, maintaining a strict social divide between the villas and the flats. The sun is merciless, the concrete endless, the boredom screams.

A mysterious middle-aged man arrives under cover of darkness at three a.m. and heads for one of the empty apartments. He has no name, no documents and only a rucksack and duffel bag. He’s escaping from something in ‘the capital’, seeking ‘a new identity, a new life’.

Meanwhile, a nameless woman leaves her beautiful villa home a few streets away to go jogging. The same route every day. Her husband has recently left her; she lives here, works from home, taking prescription drugs to sleep. The monotony of life in this ‘prison of their own choosing’, is alleviated only by the regular residents’ association meetings.

‘She needed to rip off the scab of monotony, she needed to feel something, anything. Any feeling would do, even an unpleasant one.’

But then the man and the woman meet, and cracks in her well-constructed life threaten to blow the town apart and expose its fragile foundations. Yes, there are building metaphors galore, but Ribas’ supreme skill in handling the material means you accept them as part of the furniture (there I go again!). Scenes of family life, madness, social divisions, poverty, old age, immigration and crime are glimpsed and integrated seamlessly in this wonderful novel, all the more moving for Ribas’ lightness of touch. The sun may be Spanish but the novel abounds in observations and lessons for all of us.

Rosa Ribas is an admired novelist in Spain and Germany (where she lived for thirty years) and is especially known for her crime novels and mysteries. This novel, Far, first published in Spanish in 2022, is in many ways a departure from her usual genre, but her gift for suspense is on full show in its breathlessly page-turning final few chapters. Also, the male protagonist has obviously committed a crime – he’s a fugitive who’s stolen a lot of money – and everyone has secrets and is petrified of the police. But the main mystery lies in the hidden stories, the unexplained past lives and the psychological guesswork you need to employ as a reader.

After her first face-to face encounter with the man (and the old man, Matias, who he hangs out with), and their obvious mutual attraction, the woman asks herself:

‘How have they ended up there? Who were they? She’d watch them, searching in vain for some gesture, some movement that might reveal what they’ve done before, because if they wouldn’t tell her, she wasn’t going to ask. To do so would be to judge, to invalidate who they were now, whether they had chosen this or it had been thrust upon them.’

The novels I read often conjure up the visual images of great art. In Far, in this story located in this otherworldly place, created by human avarice and abandoned of humanity, I see the harsh white walls, sharp shadows, lonely figures and ominous skies of a Giorgio de Chirico painting.

Reviewed by Rosie Goldsmith

FAR

by Rosa Ribas

Translated from the Spanish by Charlotte Coombe

Published by Foundry Editions (2024)

September 2025 #RivetingReviews titles are available to buy from bookshop.org.

Rosie Goldsmith is Director and Founder of the European Literature Network and Editor-in-Chief of The Riveter. She was a BBC broadcaster for twenty years and is today an arts journalist and presenter. She was chair of the judges for the EBRD Literature Prize 2018–2020.

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