Lord of the Flies meets Javier Marias, a dark and glinty literary gem with huge potential.

One day, the children begin to show up in the subtropical town of San Cristobal, unwashed and hungry. No one knows where they have come from or where they disappear to each night. And then they rob a supermarket and stab two adults, bringing fear to the town.

So begins a thrilling morality tale that retraces the lines between good and evil, the civil and the wild, dragging our assumptions about childhood and innocence out into the light.