I set myself a goal of getting this novel translated into English when it was first published in Spain almost a decade ago, back in 2011. However, when Amazon Crossing proposed the project this year, all this time later, I had some doubts as to whether it would be advisable to go ahead with it. I even considered passing up the opportunity. Why? Well, because I wrote this book that you’re about to read more than ten years ago. It was my first novel, but it will reach you, English-speaking readers, as if it were my fourth, after The Light of the Fireflies, Desert Flowers, and Under the Water. And naturally, it worries me to think you’ll be reading a text written with much less expertise than you’d expect from an author with four novels published.

The Warning is a story that I adore, with characters I loved creating, especially the boy Leo and his problematic relationship with his mother, Victoria, but also the ill-fated couple Andrea and Aarón. It’s also the book that began my career, so all my early memories as a writer are associated with The Warning, which makes it something more than just a book for me: it’s a crucial turning point in my life. To top it off, the book still brings me joys such as this translation and its recent film adaptation (the movie is available on Netflix, by the way—you can watch it, but only after reading the book).

In spite of all this, I reread The Warning today and suffer when I discover certain passages that I’d never write in the same way now. I wince at each confusing shift in point of view, I roll my eyes at certain similes and metaphors, and I cringe at characters’ intrusive thoughts. It’s like watching an old VHS of a school show: you know the child dressed as a raccoon and trying to sing, dance, or act is you, and you also know that, at that moment, you were giving it your best, really trying hard, but even so, you can’t help covering your eyes now and again in a fit of embarrassment.

In a way, what the offer from Amazon Crossing forced me to do was decide whether to show this old VHS tape to the world. Whether to let you all see me dancing dressed as a raccoon. In the end, despite my doubts, the decision was yes. Most of all, because of my desire for the story of Leo Cruz, a boy who dreams only of seeing shooting stars, to reach as many readers as possible. Because neither he nor Aarón nor Andrea is to blame for the fact that I was unable to bring them to life and tell their story as well as they deserved. They have the same right as the characters in my other novels to be read in English (I will also take this opportunity to explain that my excellent translator into English, Simon Bruni, has been as faithful as ever in his translation, so any strange sentences or constructions in the text are my fault and from the original version in Spanish).

So I ask you to completely forget who wrote this and simply enjoy getting to know Leo Cruz, a very special nine-year-old boy. I hope you’ll be there with him through the hard times and give him the support he doesn’t receive from his mother. I also hope you appreciate the chamomile scent of Andrea’s hair, feel the heat of the pavement on your bare feet, and try to understand how overwhelming Aarón’s feelings of guilt must be for him. In short, I invite you to meet the inhabitants of a strange Spanish town that an apprentice writer imagined ten years ago. A town overshadowed by a strange pattern of death and intersecting destinies . . . or perhaps just an unlikely series of coincidences.

Get the book in digital, paperback or audio formats here: THE WARNING.