SANTIAGO EXIMENO Libros Relatos Microrrelatos Juegos Otros Premios Contacto English version Version française

ALICIA EN EL SÓTANO

ALICIA EN EL SÓTANO

Tenebrous Press, 2026 Translation by Alicia L. Alonso
Libros.com, 2015
Finalista I Premio Novela Negra "Calibre 44" 126 páginas
Novela



EL LIBRO

Alicia, una niña de seis años, desaparece una tarde en el parque mientras sus padres discuten. Todos la han visto, pero nadie sabe dónde ha ido. Los padres, tras una búsqueda infructuosa por parte de la Policía, tratarán de rehacer sus vidas. Pero el sentimiento de culpa que consume al padre le llevará a tratar de localizarla a cambio de cualquier cosa, incluso de su propia vida.

En su búsqueda desesperada hallará un patrón, una relación inesperada entre las desapariciones de los niños y los accidentes que sufren en los parques. Y ese patrón le conducirá hasta un anciano, Aquel que viene a por los niños, la clave para descubrir qué le ha ocurrido a su hija y dónde se encuentra.

Alicia en el sótano es una historia sobre la pérdida, un libro que habla de lo más terrible que le puede ocurrir a unos padres, perder a un hijo.


THE BOOK

One summer afternoon, Santi and Maria's daughter disappears from a public park without a trace.
After months of agony and fruitless investigation that only serves to tear his life even further apart, Santi learns of a being that unleashes an entirely new kind of horror on the young family's life:
"He Who Does Not Speak With Children."


EN PRENSA

«No solamente los escenarios le delatan, también los nombres de sus hijas, de su mujer, incluso el suyo. Todos son reales, y la valentía de Santiago es encomiable porque estamos hablando de un indecoroso desnudo narrativo. Santiago se explora a fondo, dejando una estela de profunda oscuridad. En este sentido, la lectura del libro es bastante arisca, amarga, y muy difícil de digerir. No hay descanso, no hay santuario para el apaleado lector en este viaje hacia el alma doliente del autor».
Alberto Monreal

«Esta ha sido una lectura corta y dura, teniendo hijos sumergirte en una historia sobre la desaparición de una niña de un parque cualquiera (podría ser el tuyo, o el mío) es bastante difícil. Eximeno es un escritor que sabe como hacerme sentir incómoda (tengo los relatos de Bebés jugando con cuchillos), y esta historia no es la excepción, es una experiencia horrorosa que lleva a los padres de la tristeza a la locura, a la miseria sobre todo moral. Me gustó que hubiera un toque sobrenatural, casi es un alivio porque la realidad es mucho mas cruda».
Mónica Fernández De Córdova Guevara

REVIEWS

"The final pages will leave you staring into the abyss, where hope and horror blur together in the most devastating way."
Lori, The Next Best Book Blog

"Tenebrous always serves the odd and the unusual, dare I say it, the weird, and Alicia is in the Basement is a serving like no other, a top tier terror that is all the more terrifying because for a while you can almost convince yourself the main character is getting better."
Leo Otherland

"Heartbreaking and painful, I couldn't bring myself to put it down and read it all in one sitting. Definitely a top read of the year for me."
Emma E. Murray

"A powerful book, a nice descent into madness. The main character's perspective is fascinating, heartbreaking, and transforms into a train wreck you can't look away from."
Jacy Morris

"You don't read Santiago's book, as much as you find yourself trapped in a box. Forced along, through a waking nightmare. It's a fever dream that throws the facts of reality and the flow of time askew. When that great ugliness, and loss becomes your world, you will be changed."
Books For Decaying Millennials

"It hurts to watch. This is a painful, unflinching book. Eximeno's prose (deftly translated to English by Alicia L. Alonso) treads carefully one moment, and then explodes like a shotgun the next. It is a very good book."
Phillip Keeling

"Overall, this tale of a child gone missing and the unimaginably dark path her father will go down to get her back is transgressive horror at its finest: unrelentingly brutal, unexpectedly lyrical, unafraid to examine the difficult questions and laced with the twisted promise of hope that lies at the edge of insanity. If you can take it, you won’t forget it."
Ed Crocker

"Definitely for readers who love grief."
Micah Castle

"One final point, while this story feels totally Spanish in its setting and observations of the reality the protagonist finds himself in, there were small details which reminded me of the way Haruki Murakami tells his tales, and I can't really give a higher compliment than that."
Kev Harrison

"This book was painful and difficult and near perfect."
Koji A. Dae

"Eximeno writes with a razor sharp precision, creating an atmosphere of thick dread that never loosens its grip. The end is haunting in the truest sense, devastating and impossible to shake."
Unstable Books

"Alicia is in the Basement is a 126-page sucker punch disguised as a parental grief story. Santiago Eximeno builds domestic realism so convincing you forget you’re reading horror, then pulls the floor out and drops you into something ancient and awful. One of the most emotionally devastating novellas in recent memory. It earns every goddamn thing it does."
The Blog Without a Face