The Creator’s Map
By Emilio Calderón
Translated by Katherine Silver
John Murray £16.99, 272 pages
FT Bookshop price: £13.59

As chaos infiltrates Europe, and fascism tightens its grip, José María, a politically ambivalent architecture student, is studying at Rome’s Spanish Academy. However, hunger forces José María and his beloved, a passionate young librarian, to raid the Academy’s library for valuable works. Their encounter with a local bookseller leads them into a world of espionage, esoteric relics and romantic entanglements.