The Orchid Eater

A seductive literary thriller about a sociopathic tutor hired by a wealthy family summering on a luxurious island off the coast of Spain. Translated from Spanish by award-winning translator Mara Faye Lethem.

I killed a man once.

So reveals a handsome, penniless English tutor. His life takes a turn when he is hired for Júlia, the daughter of a wealthy family spending the summer in Tabarca. The parents pass the time filling the swimming pool with pink champagne for outrageous parties, and also propositioning the tutor to join their sexual escapades.

When they all set sail aboard their private yacht for the island of Lipari, tension grows, and the story of how the tutor came to be in their service slowly unspools. The family doesn’t realize he’s already been watching them for quite some time, and nothing about his arrival was accidental…

As their time together grows more intense and his traumas resurface, the tutor is forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: perhaps the only way to survive is to confess his story… or take control before he is discovered.

The Orchid Eater is a hypnotic journey to the edges of morality, where desire, violence, and redemption intertwine, leading back to a man who is a cipher even to himself.