What can literature do? What horizons can it reach? Or, more specifically, what can literature do in a world that is collapsing, haunted by global warming, pandemics, the rise of the far right, and increasing poverty, among other tragedies? In short, in a reality in which everything seems more urgent than literature? Through writing that incorporates the dynamics of The Unfolding World (“O Mundo Desdobrável: Ensaios para depois do Fim“), Carola Saavedra brings together themes such as the end of the world, ancestry, permaculture, psychoanalysis, literature written by women, indigenous literature, reflections on Carolina Maria de Jesus, Hilda Hilst, Clarice Lispector and many other exponents of the arts, cinema and phylosophy. Also featured are Don Quixote and the birth of the modern novel, as well as the idea of literature beyond writing, literature as an oracle, revelation and the opening up of new and unexpected possibilities. So, what can literature do? In this beautiful and vibrant book, it seems it can do a lot.

The Mantle of the Night (“O Manto da Noite “) is a dreamlike journey through the South American Cordillera, in which ancestry and identity are blurred – and confirmed – through the many fragments that piece together the past, the present and the future. Prose, diary, theatre – these are the narrative genres that outline the Cordillera that runs through this novel. In an introspective foray through Latin America and its past marked by invasions, massacres and struggles, Carola Saavedra turns to individual issues while expanding into a collective universe.

With Somnolent Weapons. A Bildungsroman (“Com Armas Sonolentas. Um Romance de Formação“) revolves around three women: Firstly Anna, an aspiring actress of humble origins who sees a German filmmaker as her means of being taken seriously and achieving fame and recognition. Moving to his home village in Germany soon after meeting, reality, exacerbated by not knowing the language, is very different to her expectations. Then there is melancholic Maike, a young German girl who, for no apparent reason, decides to study Portuguese at university to the disgust of her parents, both lawyers. She gradually discovers that her unlikely connection with the language and Brazil is growing stronger. And there is a third character, unnamed, who at the age of fourteen is forced by her mother to leave her home in the interior of Brazil to work as a domestic servant in Rio de Janeiro, where, like so many similar cases, complex relationships will develop in her dealings with her employers.

They are three very distinct, but strongly interconnected, women who experience a growing situation of abandonment and exile – whether geographical or emotional. The journey that each one of them embarks on is a way of “returning home”, in the quest to unveil their true identity.

Carola Saavedra’s new book The Inventory of Missing Things (“O Inventário das Coisas Ausentes”) is a multilayered novel about two lovers, their families and their past. While the protagonist has always been a disappointment to his father, a former resistance fighter during Brazil’s dictatorship, his girlfriend Nina, divorced after a smothering marriage, has a troubled family history dominated by religion and science. When they meet again 14 years after Nina’s surprising departure, they get closer again, but it may be too late. With her characteristically meaningful insinuations and wonderful prose, Saavedra makes this novel a fascinating reading experience.

Landscape with Dromedary (“Paisagem com Dromedário”) is a fascinating piece of remembrance and reflection. Withdrawn to a volcanic island, the plastic artist Érika records her thoughts about recent events and memories on tape. It is her attempt to come to terms with her relationship with Alex and figure out who she is without him and their mutual friend Karen, whom they both left behind when she fell terminally ill. In beautiful and concise language, Saavedra questions the traditional idea of relationships and takes the reader to the inner self of an unusual woman.

In Blue Flowers (“Flores Azuis”), Saavedra tells an ingenious story about a man who undergoes a deep transformation. When the recently divorced Marcos opens some letters addressed to his previous tenant and referring to the end of a love story, his whole life begins to fall apart. The more he feels drawn to the mysterious A. who signs the letters, the more he questions his own relationships to the women around him. And maybe the letters are not reaching him merely by chance after all… Written in refined prose, Blue Flowers plays with what the unsaid can achieve in a very elaborate way.

Intermingling the beauty of literary fiction and the conciseness of a biography, in La viuda de los Van Gogh (“The Widow of the van Goghs”) Camilo Sánchez shows us a new side to the famous painter, which we have never imagined.

Paris 1890: Johanna van Gogh Bonger is married to Vincent van Gogh’s younger brother Theo. When van Gogh commits suicide, Theo soon dies of grief. Johanna regains part of the painter‘s vast œuvre, including his letters to Theo, and gradually discovers a new Vincent van Gogh, one who could also write beautifully. An educated woman who reads Shelley, Johanna opens a pension for travellers in a Dutch village, something unheard of for a single mother in those times. As she makes a success of part of van Gogh‘s drawings after years of ridicule from the critics, her life changes completely.

Reminiscent of the successful movie The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Camilo Sánchez paints a vivid portrait of turn-of-the-century Europe, moving from Paris to Brussels to Amsterdam. Insightful and authentic, La viuda de los Van Gogh is an unforgettable read.

After her first novel A House Full of People Mariana Sández returns with a beautiful and accurate novel about independence, belonging and a sense of duty, in which she once again demonstrates her ability to unravel the complex texture of human psychology. Dorothea Dodds has been living unnoticed for 59 years. In the shadow of an absent and troubled brother, it is she who takes care of her parents. She is daughter, secretary, housewife and invisible glue that holds everything together. She is, without a doubt, the ideal person that anyone would want to leave in charge of their house during the summer holidays. And one fine day, when she needs to get away from it all, that’s exactly what she decides to do. With the help of her English cousin Mary Lebone, Dorothea gets a job looking after houses and pets across the English countryside, and in these glimpses into other people’s lives she finds clues to her own. In prose that follows in the footsteps of Natalia Ginzburg and Iris Murdoch, Life in Miniature (“La vida en miniatura”) is a travel book where the road is travelled on the inside: Dorothea crosses the English countryside as she retraces key episodes of her past and learns to live in her present. With a writing that is both exquisite and natural, in which tenderness and humour shine through, Mariana Sández offers us a social satire in which the most biting and the most beautiful aspects of life merge.

A House Full of People (“Una casa llena de gente”) delves into the private and common spaces of a small building and the people who inhabit it, in order to reconstruct a memory. With subtle humour, intelligent suspense and delightful writing, the novel exposes both human weaknesses and the wounds caused by generational clashes. Literature is neither more nor less than a house full of people, or at least it is for Leila Ross, a translator and frustrated writer for whom time is organised in and for books. However, her life is rather more complex than that: she has to cope with the demands of the household and a very demanding mother, the fearsome Granny, proudly English by birth, pragmatic and judgmental. And then there is the house, the castello where the whole family will live, and which will shape a plot that progresses through the unspoken, the suggested, the contrast between points of view, humour and mystery. Predicting her own death, Leila bequeaths to her daughter Charo her diaries and a large collection of family photographs and films, as well as a list of instructions telling her what to do with them. Charo will gradually rediscover a new side of her mother, which until then had remained hidden.

In Some Normal Families (“Algunas familias normales”), one could say that the characters in these stories are, for the most part, “ordinary people.” Neighbours in a condominium, office colleagues, two inseparable elderly sisters, an unemployed executive, a taxi driver who hasn’t managed to start a family… People with desires, pettiness, and fears that we can all recognize in ourselves or in those around us. But the art of these stories is as simple as it is complex: to look at the usual and ordinary a little more closely, to shift the gaze slightly to the sides, to find there that subtle deformity which opens the door to fascinating worlds, as personal as they are strange, worlds that we sometimes don’t even suspect exist or simply insist on not seeing, and which confirm to us that no one is normal up close. After reading this book, it is impossible not to see stories in every person we encounter. Mariana Sández creates literature and inevitably infects those who read it.

There is a street in Mexico City formed like an ellipse. If you walk by it, you will find yourself passing by the same places again and again. This disturbing detail brings us into the world of Galo, a child who lives in this street and is trapped within his interpretation of a double family mandate: his father has told him “you’ll be a carpenter or you will not be anything,” whereas his mother has told him “my son will never leave this house.” Galo chooses to be nothing and not to leave his home. But the world and history end up coming to his home. After his father goes away with another woman, his mother rents out rooms which are occupied for a time by a Jewish family fleeing the Nazis, by a Spanish barber who escaped the civil war, and by some young Latin American revolutionaries. Galo observes and lives together with these people, trying to understand their ideals and their lives, which in turn will allow him to create his own view of the world and witness important events of the twentieth century.

The Guardian of Amsterdam Street (“El guardián de la calle Ámsterdam”) is a cool and bright book, relating both big and small dramas with humour. A deeply human book that tells a moving story and the possible ways of being in the world and transforming it through our actions. It raises many questions. Perhaps one of the most powerful is this: What can we contribute – from joy or from anger – to bring about what we think needs to happen?

A Manual on Solitary Passion (“Manual da paixão solitária”): At a congress of biblical studies held in a Brazilian city, Harold Veiga de Assis, a famous historian and professor at a prestigious North American university, presents a paper that is based on a manuscript discovered only a few months previously in a cave in Israel that refers to a short passage in the Book of Genesis. It tells the story of patriarch Judah and how his decision to increase his clan leads to the loss of his children. Two of his sons, Er and Onan marry, one after the other, the young and beautiful Tamar, but neither of them manage to father any children. The first son, Er, is punished by God with death for his inability to procreate. Traditionally the Second son, Onan, is responsible for taking the place of his older brother. He, however, refuses to carry out this role since he considers it a humiliation and would rather spill his semen on the ground, than produce any children with her. God punishes him too, with death. Judah’s youngest son Shelah is the only one left and he does not want to him to go to Tamar for fear of losing him too. Dishonoured and deprived of children, Tamar plays a trick that goes down in history. A masterly raconteur, Veiga de Assis manages to capture the attention of the congress members, which prompts Diana Medeiros, also a historian and university professor and one of Veiga de Assis’ old students, to offer her interpretation of the biblical text, which in turn unleashes a heated debate. The antagonism that arises between the two professors gives way to a modern debate on the biblical facts being presented, which at the end of the day are really explorations into the fundamental feelings of human beings.

As in his previous novels, “The Woman who wrote the Bible” and “The Temple Hawkers”, Scliar uses a biblical theme to prompt the narration of two very different points of view. Typically amusing and thought provoking, he addresses the basic emotions of every human being – love, hate, envy, jealousy – all of which have played a part in every human story throughout the ages.

The Temple Hawkers (“Os vendilhões do templo”): The famous Bible scene in which Jesus furiously drives the merchants from the Temple provides Scliar with the idea for his new novel, which is set in three different eras and takes a good-humoured look into the relation between religion and commerce. The author starts off with the story of a man from 33 AD, a skilled and inventive salesman. The second story takes place in the 17th century in the south of Brazil, in one of the Jesuits’ missionary outposts. The third and final part of the novel is set in the same place, where a small town has been built on the site of the old mission. The year is 1997. The narrator is a broke, melancholy journalist. As in his previous works, the author looks back to tell the present through the past. And the questions that are repeatedly raised in the course of the novel do not apply to Brazil alone: What is the relationship between religion and commerce? How can ideals survive reality? Scliar once again seduces the reader in this funny, ironic novel as the masterful storyteller he is.

The Hidden Diamond (“Na noite do ventre, o diamante”): The family Nussembaum lives in a remote village in Russia. For Sabbath each week, Esther, mother of two sons, puts on a precious diamond ring in her humble little house. And what a diamond it is! It accompanies the reader throughout the centuries up to the present. First it is brought from Brazil to Amsterdam by a neo Christian persecuted by the Inquisition and then it is handed down from generation to generation. In the beginning of the 20th Century the family Nussembaum emigrates to Brazil. In order to bring the ring safely across the border, one of the sons swallows the ring, the other, Gregório, swallows the stone. The family soon regains the ring, the stone, however, has implanted itself in Gregório’s bowels. Will it ever be found again? The doyen Scliar once again combines occurrences bordering the absurd with historical facts and lets the reader take part in an entertaining game amid reality and fiction.

Kafka’s Leopards (“Os leopardos de Kafka”) tells the story of a misunderstanding and its expansive and entertaining consequences. In 1916, in a Europe devastated by the First World War and on the threshold of the Bolshevik Revolution, the young Russian Benjamin travels to Prague on a secret mission. When he is mistakenly handed The Temple Leopards by Franz Kafka, he believes it to be a coded message. The result is a truly Kafkaesque situation.

In a past-life therapy session, a mysterious woman makes a remarkable breakthrough when she discovers that in a previous life she was one of King Solomon’s seven hundred wives. In language that hilariously mixes modern jargon and biblical diction, she sets out to tell the story of her earlier incarnation three thousand years in the past, revealing how she went from a provincial nobody to a queen.

Yet being royalty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. As the least desirable of King Solomon’s wives and concubines, she is unceremoniously discarded and forgotten in his harem. But as luck would have it, she possesses a unique gift: she is a woman who knows how to read and write. Once her talent is discovered, King Solomon charges her with writing what will become one of the most important texts in human history. Along the way our nameless narrator leverages her newfound status as royal scribe to bring about her own secret agenda.

A brilliant feminist critique skewering the absurdities of patriarchy, The Woman Who Wrote the Bible (“A Mulher que Escreveu a Bíblia”) is a comic masterpiece of truly biblical proportions.

In The Centaur in the Garden (“O centauro no jardim”), Moacyr Scliar humorously links fairy-tale, myth and the banality of everyday life in a bourgeois society. Guedali Tartakovsky, son of Jewish immigrants in Brazil, sees the light of day in 1935 in the form of a centaur – half man, half horse. He spends his youth concealed from the outside world by his caring family. He reads a lot and completes correspondence courses. When he reaches puberty he is drawn to the outside world, though he realises that relations with women are bound to be difficult. He becomes a circus performer and by chance gets to know the female centaur Tita. The two of them decide to undergo an operation in a Moroccan clinic to be given full human form. They succeed in becoming integrated into society; Guedali makes his living as a business man. Yet even after the surgical intervention, he still longs for his former appearance again. Here fairy-tale, myth and the banality of everyday life in a bourgeois society are humorously linked. Scliar focuses on the diversity of the ethnic groups in Brazil (Tita is half Indian) and the identity crisis, the inner turmoil of all those who do not correspond to the norm. For the author, assimilation always signifies loss.

Scliar is one of the few novelists in Brazil to deal with the topic of Jewish immigrants, as in The One-Man Army (“O exército de um homem só”). He is also a master of short stories, of a fantastic and absurd kind. I’m attracted by the fluid borderline between the literary and the humorous, the real and the absurd. Medicine is another topic that runs through his oeuvre. With considerable humour the author presents the issues of alienation, of religious and ethnic belonging, of the discrepancy between individuality and group identity.

Phenotypes (“Marrom e Amarelo”) is about two brothers who are very different from each other. Federico is light brown, tall, and quiet. Lourenço, one year younger, is dark brown, handsome, and a good guy. They grow up in a poor neighbourhood of Porto Alegre under the pressure of racial discrimination. While Lourenço tries to face it naturally, Federico becomes a tireless activist. At the age of 49, he is called to appear before a commission in Brasília, instituted by the new government, to discuss how to fill racial quotas in universities. Brown and Yellow is a book unparalleled in contemporary literature, which portrays a Brazil in turmoil, from the inertia of political command to the chronic racial tension of the entire society. It is a precise novel that makes us dive into the exposed abysses of the country. This novel discusses racism in an incisive way that, I believe, has never been seen in Brazilian literature. It questions class values, delves into the political, social and cultural developments from 1973 to 2016, showing a racist Brazil with no way out, no perspective and no equality, giving us only escape as a right and a promise of happiness. I can say that I have been waiting for a book like this for a long time. And it came.

My World Versus Marta (MMXM) (»Meu Mundo Versus Marta«) is a dystopic graphic novel in black and white without any text. Time and place are unknown. The atmosphere is marked by a fragile balance between a civilisation in crisis and a little-known presence called Marta, the Mars, the Weapon, the Death. In the beginning, the unnamed male protagonist is raising a little girl which turns out to be a bio-robot. It grows throughout the day, becoming a woman. In a scenario of endless rites and under the mediation of a growing distrust, Scott and Sica, two of the most outstanding names among contemporary Brazilian artists, create a story of extraordinary architecture, against protofascism – and in search of all that is human in us.

Nowhere People (“Habitante Irreal”) is a novel about different people all living on the fringes of Brazilian society. 21-year-old Paulo is disappointed with the country’s social and political development after the military dictatorship. When he meets the homeless indigenous teenager Maína, he is moved by a rare sense of duty. Their love affair will mark both their fates and their struggles will continue in their mestizo son Donato. With this drastically realistic story and his plain language, Scott manages to captivate his readers.

Ithaca Road leads us to the land down under. The young Maori Narelle comes to Sydney in order to run her brother’s restaurant after he skips town under a burden of debt. Haunted by her violent past, Narelle meets the autistic girl Anna and opens up to another human being for the first time in years.

In Green Club and the Soil League: How it all began (“O Clube Verde e a Liga dos Solos: Como tudo começou”), four sixth-grade friends investigate a farm suspected of using illegal pesticides. Esperança, Joia, Clá, and Nim were merely attempting to complete a school project, but ended up involved in the rescue of an ancient being with special powers, a member of the Soil League. The League members are under threat, and the lives of everyone on the planet depend on them. They will join forces with the Green Club to try to stop the actions of powerful people who, driven by greed, are creating the most devastating pesticide, capable of destroying all types of soil in the world, thus leaving humanity without food.
With short, dynamic chapters narrated in the first person, renowned authors Morgana Kretzmann and Paulo Scott sensitively address themes such as first love, school life and friendship, as well as focusing on environmental crimes and reflecting on the relationship between humans and nature.
An adventure full of twists and turns suitable for readers aged 9 and up.

A multicultural addition to the Passover picture book canon, this sweet story explores the meaning of freedom for the Jewish people–and their pets!

This Passover, Jordanita’s family is leaving their Miami apartment and flying to Argentina to spend the holiday with their cousin. Visiting their cousin is the best, since he not only has a giant yard—he also has two dogs, a cat, two turtles, and two parrots called Tic and Toc! But when Jordanita hears the Passover story this year, she can’t help but notice that Tic and Toc are in a cage. If the point of Passover is to celebrate freedom, shouldn’t that apply to all creatures?

In The Passover Pet Surprise / La gran sorpresa de Pésaj, celebrated Jewish Argentine author Ana María Shua explores the nature of freedom and the love of family, perfectly paired with the gentle humor of Spanish illustrator Angeles Ruiz’s lively illustrations.

Bodies that conceive. Bodies that grow. Bodies that age. Bodies that break and heal. Bodies we do not forget. Bodies that must be cared for and that care. Our bodies and their bodies.
Moving in its honesty, beautiful in its closeness, unique in its humor, Ana María Shua’s Broken Body (“El cuerpo roto”) is also remembered and recreated body. Astonishment and agitation in discovery; dignity and effort in overcoming; pain and love in mourning; each coexist with a lucid gaze and a companionate literature, where the symptom, the wound, or the scar is a hymn to life.

Is it possible for a mother, or a father, to accept that the own daughter is a bad person? This is the great theme of the new novel by Ana Maria Shua, Daughter (“Hija”). Natalia is a beautiful girl with a magical, destructive smile. Through her mother’s eyes, the reader will perceive certain disturbing signals. And yet how can you accuse such a small girl of selfishness, or manipulation? It is obvious that the little girl had nothing to do with the bullying of a sick classmate. Nor the death of her grandfather.

When the couple separate, the mother concentrates all her energy to prevent her daughter feel guilty unfairly. But Natalia does not feel guilty of anything, and she does not mind running over anyone who stands in her way. Interwoven with the story, Shua (herself the mother of three daughters), includes passages from her own diary, sharing her fears and desires as the novel matures.

What does one know about his own children? Are parents guilty of everything their children become? These are some of the dilemmas which this novel poses and does not intend to solve.

Mister Pluf comes from Venus and is looking for work on planet Earth. At first, he seems to be doing well, but whenever people realise just how different he is, they turn him away. Until an author gives him a place in a new book.

Mister Pluf. My Friend From Another Planet (“El Señor Pluf. Mi Amigo De Otro Planeta”) is a picture book that encourages us to reflect on the differences that make us unique, and shows us how much we are losing by refusing to embrace those who are different.

Suitable for readers aged 4 and up.

Fears have always been an important part of a child’s world. Many people say it is essential not to have them, that we must overcome them in order to face life. In The Land of Lost Fears (“El país de los miedos perdidos”), Ana María Shua and Sebastián Dufour offer a critical yet thoughtful perspective, emphasising the importance of these fears because, were they not to exist, we would face all manner of dangers. A different perspective, portrayed through the story of Lisandro, the boy who is afraid of being bitten by dogs, and Sebastián Dufour’s exquisite illustrations, which help children to accept their deepest fears and understand the importance of being able to face them.

Suitable for readers aged 7 and up.

Shua’s novel, The Weight of Temptation (El peso de la tentación), is set in the near future and takes on the ever-expanding cult of the body-beautiful and dieting that is gripping the industrialised world.

The life of the 43 year-old main character, Marina, seems to be running smoothly. Nobody suspects that her every waking thought is focused on her next meal, turning daily life into a torment. From her childhood onwards, her relationship with food has been manipulated. On the one hand, her mother has always badgered her to eat well and plenty, but at the same time she wants to have a slim and willowy daughter. By the time she gets married, she has tried out every imaginable form of dieting and therapy. When she has to give up the diet pills for medical reasons, she loses control and puts on more than 30 kilos.

Her husband Tomás loves her all the same, but he has lost his sexual desire for her. So Marina decides to resort to a last-ditch solution: she scrapes together all of her money and goes to the private slimming institute Las Espigas, in full knowledge that she will have to spend at least three months in the institute, fully isolated from the outside world. The methods of the charismatic head of the institute – known to all only as the Professor – are somewhat questionable and do not always respect his patients’ dignity. The educational measures include clamping solitary confinement or torture with electric shocks.

As Marina’s release date approaches, the youngsters attempt a rebellion, and the power relations in the institute are set to be turned upside-down…

In this novel, Shua exposes the background to a vicious circle of hunger and obsessive slimming, to which increasing numbers of people are falling victim, and does so forcefully, with a sense of humour and a good deal of empathy. Here, hunger also stands for unfulfilled wishes, against the backdrop of the question of how free people are, or the extent to which they subjugate themselves to authority or orders.

In her latest volume of microfiction, Circus Freaks (“Fenómenos de circo”), Ana María Shua toys with the fascination of dissimilar sensations like melancholy and astonishment, sadness and enchantment, playing to the readers’ most innate fears and hopes. With her characteristic large doses of irony and imagination, in stories of famous circus artists and events based on true facts Shua combines the world’s paradoxes with the preciseness of language that renders her stories so unique.

Shua’s novels are a humorous, often sarcastic portrait of the Argentinian society. Her first novel I am a Patient or I am patient (“Soy paciente”) describes the daily life in hospital, the miserable standards of health care, and in a sarcastic, ironical way, illustrates the bureaucracy which forces a helpless person to be a patient patient, an exhilarating allegory […]. A terrific first novel. (Kirkus, 1997). Two of her novels have been made into films, and some of her stories were translated into German, French, English and Dutch.

In 1991 followed the ironic portrait of the Argentinian husband, The Average Argentinian Husband (“El marido argentino promedio”) which immediately became a bestseller. The Jewish emigration into the promising New World is the theme of The Book of Memories (“El libro de los recuerdos”), Shua’s third novel, written with a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. Buenos Aires is also the scenery of Shua’s latest novel Death as a Side-Effect (“La muerte como efecto secundario”), in the year 2002 plus x: However oppressive the scenario may seem, Ana María Shua has nevertheless succeeded in writing an engaging sensitively observed novel about human relationships, about the difficulty of forgiving and the opportunity it offers. With great tenderness the author makes a first-class, vehement, literary plea for the dignity of man as inviolable, always, even in the year 2002 plus x. A shockingly topical book.

Ana María Shua is the greatest source of micro-stories in our language. Her work is a first-class literary exploration that has modified our understanding of brevity. The challenge of a book like The War (“La Guerra”) is to tackle one of the most terrible and complex episodes of humanity through minimal writing. War has altered geographies and peoples to the point of destruction. Literature has always borne witness to this. Thus, warriors, weapons, strategies, battlefields, historical milestones, heroes, and heroines parade through its pages. Everything forms part of this art of war, formed by someone who has shown herself to be the leading fighter for the kingdom of nuance, silence, ellipsis, the poetic: the marshal of a genre.

Consuelo grows up in the mountain village Boeza in the North of Spain. Life there is hard, and her stepmother and the work in the coal mine don’t make it any easier. In the mines, she meets Rogelio, who has suffered terrible things: hunted as a traitor to his nation by Franco’s henchmen, he has been imprisoned and tortured. Together, Consuelo and Rogelio give their lives new meaning, and soon their daughter Elvira is born. But when his own brother betrays Rogelio, they have to flee the country. In Argentina, they find a new home and certain happiness, raising their two children on a tiny island of their own in the Tigre river delta. However, also this idyll ends when something terrible happens to Elvira, something that is never mentioned again. Finally, Consuelo and Rogelio move to the city, and the island becomes a place of happy refuge for their grandchildren. Their granddaughter Sofía in particular wants to find out more about her origins, and after Rogelio’s death she sets upon reliving Consuelo‘s past with her grandmother.

La abuela civil española (“The Spanish Grandmother”) is an intimate family portrait full of tenderness, whose characters are not only true-to-life but also based on the author’s own ancestors. Both Stefanoni’s warm tone and her unsentimental prose make this novel so outstandingly profound and powerful. The ideal book for the 80th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, which will be commemorated in 2016.

In the opening scene, Max Müller, a famous Swiss painter, lies unconscious on the floor of his studio in Zurich. Somebody has shot him with a nail gun. A few months earlier, Gottfried Messmer, owner of the Café Glück, receives his father’s legacy: a cane and a sealed letter put in a safety deposit box in a Swiss bank. The cane hides a valuable painting, “Inside the Forest”, and the letter, written in 1960 by his father Hermann, urges Gottfried to find its rightful owner: a Jew whom Hermann helped to enter Switzerland illegally in 1942, when the Confederation closed the border to those seeking refuge on racial grounds. But Gottfried is afraid of going over old ground. He had a complicated relationship with his father, who committed suicide when Gottfried was still a child. Therefore, he hangs the painting on the wall in his café. Soon several persons show an interest in the small work of art. Among them is his friend and regular client at the Café Glück, the painter Max, and an anonymous caller. The first suspects that his father was the owner of the painting, while the latter needs money and already has a buyer in the USA. Gottfried removes the painting from the wall, but only when the caller starts threatening him making allusions to Gottfried’s girlfriend Julia, he is ready to take action and finally fulfill his father’s wish. He comes to terms with him and his past, and also comes closer than ever to Julia, looking now to the future with an optimism that is unusual for him.

The novel is a caleidoscope of characters intertwined with each other in a complex and peculiar way, every detail of its construction is in place. In the process, the reader learns about the true role of Switzerland during the Second World War, the traffic in looted art and the origin of the numbered and dormant accounts. Inside the Forest (“El bosque en silencio”) fascinates the reader with a modern love story and a constantly increasing tension. Last but not least, it is a plea for the importance of memory and justice, of friendship and loyalty.