Perhaps that most appropriate adjective to describe the stories collected in this volume is ‘cruel’. But the cruelty that distinguishes them is not only reflected in the subjects that they deal with –mindless atrocities, nameless savagery, bestiality that freezes the blood–, but it is also, above all, because of the attitude of the narrator, and with the pitiless way that he deals with the subjects and with the readers themselves. Just as you can distinguish a human body within a bloody mound of dismembered parts and guts, here, in many of the pieces, you can see the essence of a story, although they lack almost all the attributes that define that genre. The impact of this book’s direct writing, filled with tension and danger, of suspense and mystery, but also of humour, is remarkable. Because the humour –a humour that is as elliptical as it is hilarious– is the burning weapon that the reader is given to protect themselves from the horror that fills these pages; pages full of crimes, of monsters, of nightmares, of enormities. But also of surprising confessions. As well as unexpected beauty.  

These Besos humanos are here to openly proclaim a truth that has hitherto been hardly whispered:  that camouflaged beneath his reputation as an elusive poet, as a ‘strange’, ‘unclassifiable’ writer, the work of Ferrer Lerín hides one of the most audacious and radical voices in Spanish literature of the last few decades. Extracted from his different books, as well as from his personal blog, the pieces collected in this volume explore that insufficiently known and politically incorrect side of the author: the master of horror, who is, at the same time and without any paradox, also a seducer.

«A poet of enigmas, of excess, of the arcane, of the Godless, of crime and offal» (Félix de Azúa).

«A profound horror, like a tunnelling machine, goes through the centre of the literature of Ferrer Lerín» (Vicente Verdú).

«His style, compact and stripped of the overheated adornments that decorate the prose of other novelists, always maintains the promising enigma of efficacy» (Fernando Savater).

«Ferrer Lerín has an astonishing indifference made, although it seems paradoxical, of risk and danger» (Jordi Ibáñez).

«The well from which this literature emerges is the intensifying deformation of memory and the discovery of a moral territory of its own, nourished by observations and knowledge about the world of animals» (Jordi Gracia).

«His sense of humour is breath-taking. His literature is free and brilliant. Ferrer Lerín is, in short, the last dandy of Spanish letters» (Manuel Vilas).