Tangram is a thriller, a fractured portrait of our contemporary corruption that ranges from the Basque Country to Reykjavík, from London to Calabria.

A set of interlinked stories that combines and recombines into a series of possible narratives, each one giving its own perspective on a world built on deceit and damage.

A morbidly obese woman, a former actress, imprisons two university students in a basement in Getxo in the north of Spain. A psychopath decides on Reykjavík as the theatre for his crimes. A thief, recently released from prison, tries to recover the money that he hid years previously on the outskirts of London. A mafioso, recently arrived in a Calabrian village, manages to win the respect of his fellow citizens even as he extorts money from them. A detective struggles to deal with his police duties and a growing sexual obsession. These stories, apparently separate on the surface, are shown to have far-reaching connections. They are pieces of a puzzle, and it is only on reading the final pages that the last one clicks neatly into place.

Winner of the 2012 Euskadi Prize for best novel of the year

Winner of the 2011 Sintagma Booksellers’ Prize

‘[Márquez’s language] is as incisive and precise as it is brilliant in its deployment of revelatory images’ El País

‘Juan Carlos Márquez is one of the safest possible bets in the current generation of Spanish writers’ El Mundo