La paciencia del agua sobre cada piedra
Alejandra Kamiya

SHORT STORIES | 2023 | 128 pages

All the darkness in the word fits in a small room, because, unlike doubts, darkness doesn't leave blank spaces. It doesn't distinguish between crevices and open space—there is nothing too small or too large for its mouth. It's one of those things that has no measure, like God or fear. A woman lives in peace with a monkey until night falls and boundaries become blurred; danger approaches. A group of dogs takes its daily stroll in the hands of their caretaker. As they walk, they converse: about repetitions, memory, death. Thanks to a shared sadness, two musicians achieve perfect harmony, as if the inescapable destiny of a piano and a violin was that one-of-a-kind union. When faced with the possibility of adopting a pet, a woman begins to doubt, feel old, but she remembers all of the dogs that accompanied her throughout her life in a kind of moving catalog. A new beginning might still be possible.

Alejandra Kamiya, creator of one of the most powerful aesthetics in contemporary Argentine literature, builds a collection of stories that question the link between human and animal, between the everyday and the oneiric, between what is said and what is suggested. And it is precisely in those points of connection that her style explodes, but not in a pompous way, but rather with the pointed modesty of a drop of water that penetrates an entire surface, especially one made of paper.

*Represented on behalf of Eterna Cadencia

RIGHTS: spanish ETERNA CADENCIA | portuguese (brazil) ARTE & LETRA EDITORA | italian LA NUOVA FRONTIERA

“How much story, how much truth, how much beauty can be written into a short story that is two, three pages long? The answer is in this book by Alejandra Kamiya, La paciencia del agua sobre cada piedra. In each of these stories, Alejandra Kamiya explores the relationship between humans and nature, humans and animals, absence and nostalgia, our need for communication and solitude. Each one of these topics are developed in an exquisite manner, with writing that is poetic, loving, minimalist.”
— Flavia Pittella, Infobae
“Alejandra Kamiya’s stories reveal the liquid qualities of language. It flows without being rowdy, it finds space where there doesn’t seem to be any and pushes forward incessantly, sometimes crystal clear and sometimes in the shadows of a deep well. This is even clearer in her third book, La paciencia del agua sobre cada piedra, which has sixteen stories that go through experiences such as death, solitude, and heartbreak until they conquer the most extreme emotions. (...) Whether the stories are realistic or fantastical, without fail the things we know become blurred in order to become new with the flow of nature.”
— Verónica Boix, Clarín
“...the stories that make up this book go through the essential and everyday moments that often go unnoticed—moments that encompass loss and grieving, silences, solitude.”
— Verónica Bonacchi, Río Negro
“In her third story collection, the Japanese influence of her paternal family is joined with force by the influence of authors like Clarice Lispector and Sara Gallardo. Not only because of the way Kamiya thinks about writing—charging it with sensory images, paying attention to to that space between each word where it seems like everything could fall apart and then get back up—but because of the constant presence of animals.”
— Carolina Esses, La Nación