'Permafrost is a discomfiting book about a sensual intoxication with life that just barely contains the desire for it to be over and done with forever. Like a perfect song, Eva Baltasar's words, as translated by Julia Sanches, have a sheen and inevitability that I won't soon forget. It held me in a trance.' Catherine Lacey; 'Reading Eva Baltasar's Permafrost is like having a rug continuously pulled out from under you until finally the rug disappears. How can a novel that orbits suicide be so sur...