A 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE FINALIST By the Colombian author of The Bitch, a 2020 National Book Award Finalist and PEN Awards Winner "An eight-year-old girl takes in a series of troubling eventsin this luminous and transfixing account of fractured family life fromColombian writer Quintana (TheBitch). Readers will be dazzled." --Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW Claudia is an impressionable eight-year-old girl, trying to understand the world through the eyes of the adults around her. But her hardworking father hardly speaks a word, while her unhappy mother spends her day... continue
Colombia's Pacific coast, where everyday life entails warding off the brutal forces of nature. Damaris lives with her fisherman husband in a shack on a bluff overlooking the sea. Childless and at that age 'when women dry up,' as her uncle puts it, she is eager to adopt an orphaned puppy. But this act may bring more than just affection into her home. The Bitch is written in a prose as terse as the villagers, with storms - both meteorological and emotional - lurking around each corner. Beauty and dread live side by side in this poignant exploration or the many meanings of motherhood and love.