Scalpel (“Bisturí”) is a dark novel about loss and vengeance. After becoming concerned about an illness, Santiago’s father consults Dr. Mansano and undergoes medical procedures that ultimately end his life. Santiago, determined to avenge his father’s death, murders Dr. Mansano. Although he acted with great caution, Santiago is forced to flee. On his journey, we learn about the thoughts that cross his mind and the small actions he has to take in order to avoid detection. With the help of his mother, friends, and family, he manages to go unnoticed, but on his return home, he discovers that everything he thinks he knows is, in reality, a lie

In Shared Rooms (“Habitaciones compartidas”) Roque, a professor of Hispanic literature in New Zealand, lives with his family far from his native Mexico. It is a quiet and even monotonous routine. One day he receives an email from Diego Valente, who has been hired by the same university and who, given his imminent arrival in New Zealand, asks for Roque’s advice on how best to acclimatise to his new environment. Diego arrives with the charming Lia and their two children. For Roque and his family, the arrival of Diego’s family seems providential, since they are the first fellow-Mexicans to come and live in the same place where they themselves have been living for the last seven years, and they hope this will bring some fresh air to their lives. However, what looks like a rosy future will become for both couples an almost nightmarish scenario, especially when Roque discovers that Diego brings with him a secret that is a heavy burden not only for him. Shared Rooms is a fascinating novel that, entering into the intricate relationships both within and between couples, explores with rare authenticity the deepest of human emotions: love, fidelity, inner exile and the meaning of our lives, all expressed in very agile prose and with a sharp sense of humour.

The Last Breakfast (“El último desayuno”) is a detective story based on real facts: the murder of a student on a university campus serves as the thread of the plot. Roque, the protagonist, is a Mexican professor at a New Zealand university. He has the impression that the police and his colleagues think he is responsible for the crime. In this situation, it does not help that after separating from his wife he is going through a period of mental instability, nor that he cannot remember the details of his relationship with Sara, the murdered student. While Roque tries to hide his fear and discomfort, he concentrates on finding a solution to all his problems and circumstances: the relationship with his ex-wife and children, his lovers, his role as resident in a foreign country. The author weaves a story of intrigue extending far beyond the detective story, where the real conflict is human frailty itself.

Rogelio Guedea’s latest novel Secret Lives (“Vidas secretas”) tells the story of a perfidious scheme. The Mexican Roque de la Mora teaches Spanish at a university in New Zealand. Although very attracted to his student Natasha, he resists her obvious advances – until he gets a nasty surprise.

The Crime of Los Tepames (“El crimen de Los Tepames”) is the last part of the captivating Colima trilogy. Two brothers are brutally murdered in the usually quiet town of Los Tepames. Abel finds out that some mining companies were quite interested in their land. As he digs deeper, he finds himself in a swamp of murderous corruption from which there is no escape. Once again, Guedea fascinates the reader with his strong language and his outstanding style. The book was among the bestselling books in Mexico’s most important bookstore, Librería Gandhi.

Colima/Mexico: in the heat of an election campaign, the governor’s brother is found assassinated with a 41-calibre bullet. Has he fallen victim to a serial killer or is the opposition party behind it? Based on a true story, the novel 41 paints a merciless picture of present-day Mexico.

In The Brothers Corona (“Conducir un tráiler”), the young Abel Corona goes looking for his girlfriend, taking a lift from a truck driver who is involved in the drugs trade. When he steals money from him, Abel starts fearing for his life. Then his brother Ismael is found dead, and Abel is confronted with an old family feud: a fight over land ending in death. Is he being lured into a trap, to fall victim to revenge?

Reading is a highly enjoyable craft, as Guedea shows in his narrative essay Business: reading (“Oficio: leer”). In the form of short fictional pieces based around the works of well-known writers such as Cioran, Bolaño, Greene, Pessoa, Kafka and García Márquez, he awakens our desire for turning pages.

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.