La estirpe
Carla Maliandi

NOVEL | 2021 | 142 pages

Between fragments of things forgotten and remembered that seem to be dominated by chance, Ana attempts to regain her memory after a minor accident. Even on a personal scale, the past becomes a battlefield for her, and the country’s history manifests itself in the milestones, symbols, and taboos that established her own lineage. Domestic conflict, then, appears framed by another more crude one: the fight for an own language and territory.

In this dazzling and subtle novel where the intimate is relentlessly projected over the political, Carla Maliandi plays on the Kafkan motif of metamorphosis, which exists here as a point of arrival. It’s very possible, for anyone, to wake up transformed into a monstrous insect.

RIGHTS: spanish PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE | english CHARCO PRESS | portuguese (brazil) EDITORA MOINHOS

“Maliandi’s writing is precise and precious at the same time. Writing that moves you like not much other writing does and that leaves you speechless: that’s what happens with books that are able to enter the minds and hearts of readers in such a profound way.”
— Selva Almada
“Sometimes, when you read a genius book, you want to run to recommend it but you don’t quite know what to say: you feel like anything will be nonsense and won’t do the novel justice. This is one of those cases—I don’t quite know how to explain the Kraftwerk-like music, the magnetism that takes your mind hostage, the magic that builds between what is and isn’t said, the abduction that this novel generates. Just like the protagonist becomes some one else, that someone else, when you read it you too become someone else. I highly recommend La estirpe: Carla Maliandi knocked it out of the park.”
— Gabriela Cabezón Cámara