Description

‘An intimate story from the family archive, a story that is also the infamous history of our continent’ Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive
‘Powerful and searing’ Samanta Schweblin, author of Fever Dream

A provocative autobiographical novel that reckons with the legacy of colonialism through one woman’s family ties to both colonised and coloniser

In an ethnographic museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener is confronted with her unusual inheritance. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artefacts, the spoils of European colonial plunder. As she peers through the glass, she sees sculptures of Indigenous faces that resemble her own – but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener.

In the wake of her father’s death, Gabriela begins delving into all she has inherited from her paternal line. From the brutal trail of racism and theft that Charles left behind to revelations of her father’s infidelity, she traces a legacy of abandonment, jealousy and colonial violence, in turn reframing her own struggles with desire, love and race. Seeking relief from these personal and historical wounds, Gabriela turns to the body and desire as sources of both constraint and potential freedom.

Blending personal, historical and fictional writing, Undiscovered tells of a search for identity beyond the old stories of patriarchs and plunder. Subversive, intimate and fiercely irreverent, it builds to a powerful call for decolonization.

Publisher Review

‘An intimate story from the family archive that is also the infamous history of our continent’ – Valeria Luiselli, author of ‘Lost Children Archive’

‘[Undiscovered] captivated me… Powerful and searing, this novel snaps, bucks, heals, and snaps again’ – Samanta Schweblin, author of ‘Fever Dream’

‘Powerful, genre-transcending… A quiet, lucid triumph’ – Irish Times

‘Perhaps the most irreverent and daring voice of the new literary generation of Latin American women’ – New York Times

‘Undiscovered’s beautiful blend of fiction and personal feeling on everything from sex, to death, to Peru’s traumatic history to France’s heritage-colonial industry could not be more contemporary, vital and important, or expressed in more dynamic and immersive prose’ – Preti Taneja, author of the Desmond Elliott Prize-winning ‘We That Are Young’