Description
Book SynopsisFrom her home in Paris, Lina recalls the story of three women whose lives unfold in the conservative city of Barranquilla in Colombia. Amongst parties at the Country Club and strolls along the promenade in Puerto Colombia, unfurls a story of sensuality supressed by violence; a narrative of oppression in which Dora, Catalina and Beatriz are victims of a patriarchal system living in and among the fragile threads of the fabric of society.
In Lina’s obsessive recounting of the past, this masterful novel transforms anecdotes of a life into an absolute view of the world, a profound panorama of Colombian society towards the end of the 50s.
Written from personal memories and historical research, this is a novel that is both precise and poetic, a novel that immortalises—from the distant perspective of its narrator—the events that took place in a small seaside town.
Distancing herself from her contemporaries of the Latin-American literary boom with a boldly feminist narrative, Marvel Moreno has created a world that both mirrors the close-up, private lives of the people of Barranquilla and the human condition itself.
*WHAT NETGALLEY READERS ARE SAYING*
"Just delightful."
"Full of a fierce fightback against generations of misogyny and toxic masculinity. This book is powerful."
"A wonderfully written and sensually feminist novel."
"I'd read Moreno again like a shot."
"There's something deliciously unexpected, even subversive about Moreno's prose."
Trade Review"Furiously feminine, raw and contemporary, Marvel Moreno lights up any literary canon with her savage portrayal: a delicate arbitrariness with which she narrated what she wanted, when she wanted, without asking anyone for permission." * Margarita García Robayo (author of Fish Soup) *
"Colombian writer Moreno (1939–1995) makes her English-language debut with a layered if diffuse story of late 1970s Colombia...Fans of the Latin American Boom will want to give this a look." * Publisher's Weekly *
"Moreno’s dense and incrementally meandering prose recites a litany of suffering layered upon suffering. Man’s inhumanity to (wo)man couldn’t be made any clearer." * Kirkus Reviews *
"One of the hundred most influential women in the history of Colombia." * Cromos magazine *
"Marvel Moreno has become one of the most renowned authors of contemporary Colombian literature." * La Prensa (Colombia) *
