An Unexpected Portrait of Madrid through Three Women

In a single apartment building in Madrid, the lives of three women intersect. On the fourth floor, Oliva’s passionate relationship has given way to abuse, her lover seeming more and more like an animal, her apartment more and more like a cage. On the third, Damaris, who emigrated from Colombia after a devastating earthquake, spends each day working as the nanny to two privileged children while hoping her efforts will provide a better life for her own. And in the tiny, disused apartment on the ground floor, Horia, a Moroccan woman who first came to Spain as a seasonal agricultural laborer, works as the building’s caretaker while searching for her missing son. Through the stories of these women, award-winning author Lara Moreno paints a vivid portrait of urban isolation and societal marginalization.

With unflinching, propulsive prose, The City plunges down the paths that led these women to and through a metropolitan landscape shaped by inequality and cultural division. With three closely-drawn character portraits and the pacing of a thriller, Moreno’s novel offers a geographyof resilience and despair in a city marked by social and cultural division.

Format: Trade Paperback

Author: Moreno, Lara

Publisher: Open Letter Books

Pub Date: May 26, 2026

Category: Fiction / Literary

ISBN: 9781960385499

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Fortress of the Forgotten Ones

The City