»The book was born from listening to the stories that surrounded me in the cities of Baixada Fluminense, where I grew up. Stories lived between four walls in homes that fought to survive against femicide, the horrors of machismo and the violence of patriarchy.«
Stefano Volp

»Home Saint explores the labyrinth of hatred within a family and its impact on each member’s psyche. This short novel reminds us that every living person carries their dead with them and that, sooner or later, they will need to be laid to rest.«
Itamar Vieira Junior

»A striking and powerful work. To construct a narrative that reveals the complexity of domestic violence in its many forms, Volp explores the visible and invisible pain inflicted by patriarchy, experienced by people of all genders, whilst also drawing on personal experiences from his childhood.«
IstoÉ

»In this beautiful book, the critical look at the abusive male also carries love in the green of well-tended plants and in the flavour of couscous. Without villains or flourishes, such is life when we have the courage to see it.«
Bianca Santana

»In the classic “Anna Karenina”, Tolstoy writes that “all happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, but Stefano Volp’s “Santo de Casa” challenges this maxim. The book shows that happiness and pain can coexist. As the author says, “what is unhappiness for some is happiness for others”.«
Folha de S.Paulo

»The sudden death of a patriarch, devoured by a jaguar, makes his entire family question their sense of mourning. The tragic nature of Zé Maria’s death symbolises all the violence that surrounds him: an abused man and an abusive father and husband. In a kind of autofiction, Stefano Volp scrutinises grief after the loss of an individual who left behind, for the most part, marks of pain. The story shows the impact of gender, race and class pressures within a family.«
Quatro cinco um

»This is the thing: a house, seen from the outside, is just a house, but its walls hold intimate secrets that are too difficult to reveal. Not in this case, as Volp puts his finger firmly in the wound.«
Mídia Ninja

»To construct a narrative that shows the complexity of family violence in multiple forms, Volp investigated the palpable and intangible pain caused by patriarchy, experienced by people of all genders, as well as drawing on personal experiences from his own childhood.«
Casa 1

»Surprising, delightful and profoundly moving. By the end of the book, we are nostalgic for a place we have never been.«
Ann Morgan, author of A Year of Reading the World

»By turns earthy, funny and lyrical, it draws on the oral tradition to question stereotypes, the social order and storytelling itself.«
Scott Pack, author of the blog Me and My Big Mouth

»Set in a shanty suburb of Angola’s capital Luanda, in the 1940s and 50s, Our Musseque twists through a lively cast, among them a cobbler, prostitute,sailor, grocer, policeman, baker, rent collector and various children. This cannot have been an easy book to translate, but Robin Patterson’s work is impressive.«
The Times Literary Supplement

»Told through the eyes of boy coming of age, graduating from playing with friends to falling in love, Our Musseque is a collection of tales which build into a novel detailing not just the boy’s transition but the erosion of the musseque as the bulldozers move in to build homes for the more affluent.The stories reflect the boyhood of the author, a Portuguese immigrant brought up in a musseque who became politically active and whose trial in 1959 helped spark the Angolan uprising against colonial rule.«
Tribune

»The shanty towns in Luanda, the capital of Angola, in the 1940s and 1950s, are vividly depicted in this idiosyncratic novel published more than 40 years after the author wrote it, in prison. Prostitutes, shopkeepers, children and drunks jostle and collide, giving conflicting accounts of their experiences as the civil war approaches, a conflict that will change their lives for good. Funny, shocking and moving, it makes you nostalgic for a place you have never been.«
The Guardian

»Stunning. A lyrical and visionary memoir of depression, Puerto Rican identity, and young womanhood.«
Kirkus Review (starred review)

»Vilar is writing about three generations of Puerto Rican women…enchantresses and destroyers, the main people they destroy tend to be themselves…But in Vilar’s case, talent, coupled with intelligence, still holds the winning hand.”«
Carolyn See, Washington Post

»This memoir introduces us to a writer bound to make an impact…An autobiography as fantastic as any novel…It is a mark of Vilar’s art that her story seems warm and alive.«
Gail Caldwell, Boston Globe

»A beautiful memoir, humorous and compassionate”«
Suzanne Ruta, Newsday

»Profoundly moving and beautifully written.«
Rosario Ferre, author of The House on the Lagoon

»The Ladies Gallery is destined to become a legendary work.«
Bob Shacochis, author of Swimming in the Volcano

»Irene Vilar is a writer of of extraordinary passion, erudition, and intelligence.«
Tobias Wolff

»Irene Vilar’s dramatic and beautifully drawn story forces the reader to confront the power of sexuality and procreation that often is the only power a young woman perceives she owns in this world. Impossible Motherhood is profound, raw, wrenching, and honest to the bone. Yet despite the title, its message is that no matter how intense the pain one has experienced, healing and redemption are in fact possible.«
Gloria Feldt

»I have never read a book like Impossible Motherhood, Irene Vilar’s disturbing, heart-wrenching, and ultimately triumphant memoir, for the simple and understandable reason that no one of her gender has ever summoned the brutally raw, transcendent courage to write such a book—and yes, confess to such a troubling story.«
Bob Shacochis, author of Easy In The Islands

»Impossible Motherhood is another dark perfect gem from Irene Vilar and a journey into a harrowing underworld but guided by Vilar’s gifts and her light we emerge in the end transformed, enlightened and oh so alive. ”«
Junot Diaz, author The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

»…an amazing book.«
The Daily Beast

»Ranging far beyond the politics of abortion, her book is a controversial and intense tale of generational and national trauma… [Vilar is] a writer of brutal honesty and profound intelligence.«
ForeWord Magazine

»Irene Vilar writes not to excuse but to explain herself.«
Elle

»…an extraordinary memoir…[Vilar’s] brutal honesty is haunting.«
The Sunday Independent