Small Wars in Madrid

David Aguilera's life is collapsing around him. After the catastrophic loss of the vessel under his command and a perilous trek across the Baltics to safety, he returns home to find himself unable to reconnect with his family. Frustrated by his inability to express what he is feeling, his wife Margalit moves out to stay with friends, taking their children with her.As David anxiously awaits the official inquiry into his conduct, he turns to those who are most important to him - his closest friend and comrade Marce; his Catholic adoptive mother; his Jewish birth mother; and Margalit, herself Sephardi Jewish. Faced with the prospect of losing his family altogether, he must confront his conflicting identities and faiths and decide the man he wants to become.

'Small Wars in Madrid is a thoughtful novel about trauma, coming-to-self, and the sometimes inextricable links between such complex processes' -Ilana Masad, author of 'All My Mother's Love'; 'A captivating page-turner with a skillfully contstructed narrative. It's a story with real depth and empathy' -Fran Hill, author of 'Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean?' and 'Cuckoo in the Nest'

Anthony Ferner started writing fiction back in the 1990s and has been a member of the Tindal Street Fiction Group since 2010. He has previously published three short novels: Winegarden in 2015, Inside the Bone Box in 2018 and Life in Translation in 2019. His upcoming novel 'Small Wars in Madrid' will be published by Fairlight Books in 2024. With a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford, and a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Sussex, Anthony had a career in academic research. He was a professor of international business until his retirement in 2014, and has published numerous research articles and monographs on the behaviour of multinational companies.