Name: January
SKU: 55719003
Price: 16.50 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Sara Gallardo
ISBN: 9781953861641

Type

Physical Book

Author

Translated by

Publisher

Language

English

Pages

114

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

15.7x13.2x0.8 cm

Weight

0.12 kg.

ISBN13

9781953861641

Synopsis "January"

"Hair-raisingly good . . . the plot explodes." - Lily Meyer, The New York Review of Books "Elegant and forceful - I couldn't put it down." - Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X ** ONE of THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023 ** A pioneering, revelatory masterpiece of modern literature that conjures the life of 16-year-old girl living on the Argentine pampas -- now in English for the very first time With echoes of Edith Wharton's Summer, this radical feminist novel broke the silence around abortion to reshape the way women's bodies and rights were perceived in 20th-century Argentina Perfect for readers of Tove Ditlevsen, Annie Ernaux's Happening, and Claudia Piñeiro's Elena Knows A radical feminist text, January was the first Argentine novel to represent rape from the survivor's perspective and to explore the life-threatening risks pregnancy posed, in a society where abortion was both outlawed and taboo. In the sweltering Argentine pampas, all things bow to Nefer. Reeds nod when she digs her heels into her horse, unripe peaches snap and fall as she gallops past. Sickly-sweet air bends, churns in Nefer's throat. Nefer measures the distance between her body and the table, and feels something filling her up, turning against her. Her belly swells. Desperate, Nefer visits a local medicine woman who is known to perform abortions but Nefer becomes too afraid to explain why she is truly there. She attends confession at church but cannot confide in the priest. During a fierce argument with her mother, she finally blurts out her secret. With a narcotic musicality and voice scorched through with honesty, Gallardo hangs before us an experience that has been lived and ignored a thousand times over. Nefer closes her eyes. We careen to her and we see.

Sara Gallardo

(Author)

View Author's Page

She was born in Buenos Aires in 1931. Granddaughter of the famous Argentine naturalist and minister Ángel Gallardo, great-granddaughter of Miguel Cané, and great-great-granddaughter of Bartolomé Mitre, the extensive library in her family home opened the doors to literature for her at an early age. January, her first novel, appeared in 1958 and received excellent critical reception. This was followed by Blue Pants (1963) and the extraordinary The Greyhounds, The Greyhounds (1968), which established her with the general public and with which she won the Municipal Prize. In addition to novels, she wrote children's literature and a book of stories (The Country of Smoke, 1977). She was also a contributor to the magazines Primera Plana and Confirmado, among others, as well as to the newspaper La Nación. Eisejuaz (1971) confirmed her as a voice without parallel, which also meant her relative marginality in the subsequent canonical narratives of Argentine literature, a circumstance that has been reversing over the last decade and a half thanks to the reissue of much of her work. In the late seventies, she left Argentina and began working as a correspondent in Europe. She died in Buenos Aires in 1988.

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