Hunting Laws
CANDAYA, 2025, 224 p. LITERARY, Rural Thriller, Spanish (Espagne)
An inquiry into hyper-consumerism in the contemporary world, institutional indolence, and the spectacle of tragedy.
‘It is difficult to write about the disillusionment of our times without falling into cynicism, but Pilar Fraile manages it,’ Isaac Rosa.
‘An intelligent book. An accurate diagnosis of our reality told in the only style possible to make that diagnosis,’ Marta Sanz.
‘A story that goes far beyond the thriller genre: a portrait of our fears, the fragility of bonds and the voracity of a world that seems to devour everything.’
Bellber in April, Diario de Mallorca, 24 July 2025
‘A counterpoint of voices, as in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and, as in Faulkner, we hear the sound and fury coming from a river, “that damned river” (…). An absorbing novel that deserves every praise.’
J.A. Masoliver Ródenas, in La Vanguardia
Devastated by a traumatic divorce and convinced of the banality and emptiness of the world around her, Jana decides to start over and join, with her son Oliver, “The Community”, a personal growth group based in a mountainous region, far from civilisation, where she hopes to let go of everything that once hurt her.
However, in this natural and seemingly idyllic setting, there lurk resentments and tensions that Jana could not have foreseen and which culminate in Oliver’s disappearance. The cold, the rain, the thick forest, the threatening appearances of wolves, the thunderous roar of the river—which upsets the neighbours—and the increasingly bitter disputes between hunters and environmentalists turn the search for the child into a nightmare from which it will be difficult to escape.
Structured around the actions and rules followed in a hunt, Hunting Laws transcends the classic thriller structure to reflect on the dissatisfaction and indolence of our times, denounce police corruption and the unhealthy voracity of the press, and question some of the paralysing myths of late capitalism, such as the contemporary idealisation of life in nature.
Por Recaredo Veredas, Zenda Libros, 12 de septiembre de 2025
“Fraile demuestra ser una novelista anclada en la realidad, que no vive en un mundo puramente literario sino que se maneja especialmente bien retratando el mundo moderno. […] una tragedia moderna donde las estructuras sociales y las heridas psicológicas funcionan con la misma implacabilidad que el destino clásico.”
En Anika Entre Libros, 25 de mayo de 2025
“Un libro para leer con calma, para disfrutar del paisaje y de ese rio que parece tiene vida propia, porque en el universo de Pilar Fraile la naturaleza tiene voz y tiene mucho que decir.”
Original Title
Las leyes de la caza
Territory of representation
World Wide
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