A group of five adolescent friends living in a housing development in a small French provincial town decides to enter an abandoned house: the experience will be the starting point of a nightmare that will change their lives. This is the premise that floats on the surface of the plot of La nit devastada, the first novel by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo (Toulouse, 1981) that we can read in Catalan thanks to the translation by Oriol Vaqué for Proa. Behind this horror premise lie family conflicts, abuse, and disappointments, but also the discovery of desire and the strength of friendship. After establishing himself before the age of 30 thanks to Una educación libertina (2008) and La sal (2010), both in Spanish published by Cabaret Voltaire, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo once again focuses on the chiaroscuro of intimacy and social inequalities through a powerful story that pays homage to writers like Stephen King and filmmakers like John Carpenter and Wes Craven with a powerful, rich, and sensory literary style.