Descripción
Through these two concepts, Elisa, the protagonist of this story, will try to overcome her fears, which are none other than those of cruel and strange modern life.
This novel, which confirms Elvira Navarro as one of the most singular voices of her generation, is perhaps one of the few in recent Spanish literature that delves into mental pathology without detaching it from the social context in which it occurs.
Elisa corrects books for a large publishing group that delays payments for months. Economic precariousness forces her to share an apartment with a strange woman with no past. A suffocating silence about what concerns the work and life of this unusual tenant leads Elisa to obsess over knowing who she is. Her questions are answered only by a series of fictions with which her flatmate sabotages any possibility of someone knowing her, or at least that's what Elisa believes, who cannot conceive that madness is a place from which one can voluntarily build oneself.
In these pages, illness ends up appearing as a sign of normality. After reading it, the inevitable question arises of whether, in a scenario like the current one, where common projects seem to have vanished, it is possible to live outside of the pathological and tell something that is not pathology.
Reviews: Elvira Navarro's writing is reminiscent of a delicate vase that - at the slightest touch - breaks and divides, or spills into tiny fragments that we try to collect and that cut us. Seemingly cold - a work of engineering: simple form, complex content - Navarro's prose detaches itself from her characters, and it harms us. Elena Medel, Calle 20
An admirable author in many ways.
Nadal Suau, El Cultural
Rethinks realism to subvert it, to expand its expressive possibilities, to take them to an extreme.
Damián Tabarovsky, Diario Perfil
Observation, empathy, and intuition are the weapons that the young writer uses to talk about what is hidden behind appearances, behind the established.
Emma Rodríguez, El Mundo
Author: Elvira Navarro
Publisher: Literatura Random House
Published: 08/29/2017
Pages: 160
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 5.30h x 9.00w x 0.60d
ISBN13: 9788439728061
ISBN10: 8439728069
Language: Spanish
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | General
About the Author
Elvira Navarro (Huelva, 1978) studied Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid. She has published two complementary books, La ciudad en invierno (Caballo de Troya, 2007) and La ciudad feliz (Literatura Random House, 2009), as well as the novel La trabajadora (Literatura Random House, 2014). She is also the author of the blog Periferia (www.madridesperiferia.blogspot.com), a work in progress about the neighborhoods of Madrid. Her work has been awarded the Jaén Novel Prize and the Tormenta Prize for best new author, and she was a finalist for the Dulce Chacón Spanish Narrative Prize. In 2010 she was included in the list of the 22 best Spanish-language narrators under thirty-five by the prestigious magazine Granta. In 2013 she was chosen as one of the Spanish voices with the greatest future by El Cultural magazine, and in 2014 the same magazine selected her work La trabajadora among the ten best Spanish novels of the year. During 2015 she served as editor for the Caballo de Troya imprint.