A secluded swamp of Germania, where the bodies of hundreds of prisoners sacrificed to the gods emerge to the surface centuries later, returning to the present the riddle of their existence. A remote realm where merchants trade in words. A cowardly Achilles who leave Troy to enjoy the life the gods don't want to let him live. A concentration camp drill built by Hitler to circumvent inspections of the International Red Cross. An abandoned robot community that continues to yearn for the return of its creators.

Fifteen stories that form a surprising constellation, on the shores of time: subverted prophecies and destinies, fictionals so frowned on that they match in value the truth, paradoxes of history. An extraordinary collection of stories that transport us to exact and distant worlds and yet connect with each other, oscillating between the present, the past and the future—categories that might well be elusive. Those who sleep, a founding book of Juan Gómez Bárcena's already essential work that we recover now on Sixth Floor, reveals him as an author of a precise, blunt and amazing narrative genius.