C diz, 1811. Espa a lucha por su independencia mientras Am rica lo hace por la suya. En las calles de la ciudad m s liberal de Europa se libran batallas de otra ndole. Mujeres j venes aparecen desolladas a latigazos. En cada lugar, antes del hallazgo del cad ver, ha ca do una bomba francesa. Eso traza sobre la ciudad un mapa superpuesto y siniestro: un complejo tablero de ajedrez donde la mano de un jugador oculto #un asesino despiadado, el azar, las curvas de artiller a, la direcci n de los vientos, el c lculo de probabilidades# mueve piezas que deciden el destino de los protagonistas: un polic a corrupto y brutal, la heredera de una importante casa comercial gaditana, un capit n corsario de pocos escr pulos, un taxidermista mis ntropo y esp a, un enternecedor guerrillero de las salinas y un exc ntrico artillero a quien las guerras importan menos que resolver el problema t cnico del corto alcance de sus obuses.

El asedio narra el pulso asombroso de un mundo que pudo ser y no fue. El fin de una poca y unos personajes condenados por la Historia, sentenciados a un vida que, como la ciudad que los alberga #una C diz equ voca, enigm tica, s lo en apariencia luminosa y blanca#, nunca volver a ser la misma.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Cadiz, year 1811. While Spain and America are both fighting for their independence, a different type of battle is being waged in Europe's most liberal city. Young women are found dead, their throats severed by the cutting slash of a whip. And in each place, just before another dead body is found, a French bomb has exploded. These events create a sinister sketch over the city: a complex chess board where the hand of a mysterious player -- a ruthless murderer, chance, the direction of the winds, the estimation of probabilities -- moves the pieces that determine the fate of the characters: a savage and corrupt police officer, the heiress to a local commercial empire, an unscrupulous privateer, a misanthropic taxidermist and spy, a guerilla fighter from the coast capable of inspiring the most tender feelings, and an eccentric artilleryman more concerned with finding a solution to the short range of his mortar and shells than with war.

El asedio reconstructs the extraordinary pulsating beat of a real or imaginary world. It is the end of an era and also the story of individuals condemned by History, sentenced to live a life that, just as the city they call home -- an enigmatic, ambiguous and misleading Cadiz, a city whose brightness and luminosity is only skin deep -- will never be the same.