Here we find Jon Bilbao at his rawest and most electrifying. The first three collections of short stories Bilbao published before joining Impedimenta are gathered for the first time in a single volume. The cornerstone of one of the most powerful voices in Spanish short fiction.

Before the Volcano is the subterranean map of an eruption. In these stories—drawn from three now-legendary and long-out-of-print books: Like a Horror Story, Under the Influence of the Comet, and Family Physics, plus three previously unpublished stories as bonus tracks—Jon Bilbao explores the moment when the everyday cracks and reveals a fissure. A woman dreams that her house is overrun by squirrels. A father fears his son's mental architecture. A comet disrupts the rhythm of a coastal town. A pair of voyeurs watch their neighbors read the Bible every night. And always, beneath the surface, lies the tremor of the unknown: the latent threat, the violence lurking beneath the surface, the estrangement that haunts the domestic sphere. Before the Volcano brings together the stories with which Jon Bilbao redefined contemporary Spanish short fiction.