Barricco’s novellas are ruminative parables inhabited by sketches of people determined to make peace with their charcoaled memories. In Civil War Spain, a man named Manuel Roca hides his young daughter Nina in a cellar moments before he’s gunned down by three assassins. Nina is seen but spared. Years later, she tracks down Tito, the man who couldn’t shoot her. Barricco orchestrates a variation on the Stockholm Syndrome in which empathy complicates intended revenge. A lean and stylish morality tale.