Eddy Arias’ novel Alicia bursts onto the literary scene as a bold debut. It approaches its female characters from an intimate and powerful perspective, rendered with remarkable depth, texture, and delicacy. The literary treatment clearly bears the imprint of an author shaped by cinema, and it does not hide it. Alicia unfolds with an extraordinarily visual and dynamic rhythm, evident in its construction of time, its handling of space, and the vitality of its dialogues. The novel thus situates itself in a unique territory, at the inflection point between a compelling film script and a great novel. Alicia is a forceful work: the first book of a writer with a voice entirely his own, and a long-breathed promise for contemporary narrative.