The latest addition to my website is Juan Pablo Villalobos‘ La invasión del pueblo del espíritu (Invasion of the Spirit People) . Set in an unnamed city but almost certainly Barcelona, this novel follows Gastón, an immigrant who runs a market garden. His friend Max, has a restaurant but he has lost his lease and refuses to leave while Gastón’s dog called Kitten is dying of cancer. Meanwhile Pol, Max’s son is working in the tundra but suddenly appears, with tales of aliens using directed panspermia to control us, while Max’s father turns up, on the run from the authorities in his country. Gastón just wants to have Kitten die peacefully in his garden, not at the vet’s, while watching the greatest footballer on Earth play, though he, too, seems to have his problems. Immigration is clearly the main topic as most of the main characters are immigrants (including the footballer) and those from Russia and China face greater opposition from the local vigilantes but, in Villalobos’s view, they enrich the local culture. With his usual humour, colourful story and sympathy for the immigrants, Villalobos gives us another fine novel.