Cold Skin

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.

Reviews of Cold Skin

A creepily compelling debut from this Barcelona-based author that reads like a sinister version of a Boy's Own survival adventure. * Financial Times * …a beguiling novel that explores the darker reaches of the survival instinct. The nightmarish quality is never overdone and the growing bond between the weather official and his attackers lends the book a rewarding complexity. At times touching, at times vicious, Pinol's dark tale lingers long after the shivers running down the spine have ceased. * The Scotsman * Cold Skin is a superbly controlled and creepy little allegorical novel…With a plot pared down to extreme basics, and no small amount of gore, Cold Skin seems to resemble a literary equivalent of the low-budget early horror movies of George Romero and Sam Raimi…But its narrator has a lofty, turn-of-the-century turn of phrase…and predictably cruel and cunning conclusion…it shows itself to be akin to Lord of the Flies or Heart of Darkness rewritten as pulp-horror schlock. * The Independent on Sunday *