Description

There are no secrets in this family!’ proclaims Damian, the father, triumphantly. A secular idealist obsessed with morality and order, he is blind to the cracks in his home’s foundations, the oppression that pervades it, and the elaborate fictions his wife and four children devise to survive it. While he quotes Gandhi and expounds on the virtues of education, charity and thrift, the children retreat into humiliated compliance or seek freedom in the most dangerous of places.

Through a mosaic of interlinked tales, spanning decades, acclaimed Spanish author Sara Mesa turns her unflinching gaze to the family as institution: the ideologies that shape it, the silences that underpin it, and the authority you can never quite escape.

Publisher Review

'In wonderfully unsettling prose, Sara Mesa traces strange and delicate constellations that glow with psychological insight.' - Chloe Aridjis 'Sara Mesa's writing is mysterious and fascinating: her characters brush against the limits in environments of fierce false calm.' - Mariana Enriquez 'When I read Sara Mesa, I'm there in the Wild West, sifting through the sand. There is a restless enjoyment, an inhospitable beauty, in my sieve. And then something miraculous when gold appears before my eyes.' - Eva Baltasar