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Saira has never liked the way she looks. She is blonde, has blue eyes and everyone calls her Kharami, that is to say bastard. She lives in Afghanistan with her sister, mother and grandfather, and believes herself to be eight years old. When Ramin – a cruel man and supporter of the Taliban – comes into her life, her family is dogged by misfortune for ever. But not everything is lost for Saira.

When the old local printer’s in which Felipe Díaz Carrión had spent half his life went bankrupt, he was left without a job and with no chance of finding another. It was the era of migration to the industrial towns of the north of Spain. His son was nine years old, and not a day passed when his wife, Asun, did not ask him to leave. So they closed up the house and went north.

Olivos de cal is a rural novel worthy of Delibes at his most sober. The skilfully drawn characters hide their feelings to such an extent that their silence is itself another character. Two stories in one place, the landscape of Jaén, unfurl through the years leading up to the harsh decade of the 1930s.

“I don't understand it one bit when Grandma says that Grandpa is worn out after so many years. One day at school we learned that stones wear out over time because of erosion. But Grandpa isn’t a stone. Or is he? Sometimes it seems that way, like when he sleeps, because he doesn't even move a millimeter.