The Education of the Monster
A haunting and deeply human story that explores how fear and memory can shape a life forever.
We tend to think the monster is always someone else: a stranger who takes a little girl in a white car, a man who attacks on an empty street... What happens when we discover the monster that we all carry inside?
Matilde is a devoted and overprotective mother of a five-year-old boy. An involuntary memory becomes the trigger that leads her to search for the reason behind this overprotection, which she increasingly understands to be harmful both to her son and to herself.
This is also the story of Matilde’s mother, Águeda, a young woman who emigrated to Germany with her family in 1963 and lived under the same roof as a man and his teenage son, a quiet boy who learned the language of humiliation far too early.
In this search, Matilde returns to her childhood, to Valladolid (Spain) in the 1970s, and to her school, run by Sister Olvido. The city is gripped by a series of kidnappings and assaults on young girls that spread panic, while an ominous silence settles over families.
The Education of the Monster is a novel about how violence is created, how fear is passed down from generation to generation, and how we all take part, sometimes unknowingly, in the making of a predator.
Because the monster does not appear out of nowhere.
It is formed on the margins.
It feeds on silence.
And someone, at some point, taught it how to be.
Original Language
SPANISH (World) | Espasa/Planeta
Prizes
Winner of the 2026 Primavera Novel Award (Premio Primavera de Novela)
