Cold Skin - Softcover

A troubling, hammering and glorious novel. -- David Mitchell A thrillingly vivid hallucination . . . it overtook my dreams . . . Sanchez Pinol creates a struggle for survival that is, at the same time, a meditation on humanity. An island story, following a long line through Robinson Crusoe right up to The Beach. * * The Times * * Superbly controlled and creepy. * * Independent on Sunday * * Remarkable . . . an addictive and unsettling read. -- Alan Warner A brilliantly suspenseful debut novel. * * Spectator * *

On the edge of the Antarctic Circle, in the years after World War One, a steamship approaches a desolate island, far from all shipping lanes. On board is a young man on his way to assume the post of weather observer, to live in solitude for a year at the end of the earth. But on shore he finds no trace of the man whom he has been sent to replace, instead just a deranged castaway who has witnessed a horror he refuses to name. The rest is woods, a deserted cabin, rocks, silence, and the surrounding sea. Then night begins to fall.