At a run-down brothel in Caudal, Spain, the prostitutes are collecting stray dogs. Each is named after a famous male writer: Dante, Chaucer, and Bret Easton Ellis. When a john is cruel, the dogs are fed rotten meat.To the east, in Barcelona, an unflappable teenage girl is endeavouring to trace the peculiarities of her life back to one woman: Alba Camb, writer of violent short stories, who left Caudal as a girl and never went back.Mordantly funny, dryly sensual, written with a staggering lightness of touch, the debut novel in English by Swedish sensation Lina Wolff is a black and Bola?o-esque take on the limitations of love in a dog-eat-dog world.