LONGLISTED FOR THE QUEEN SOFÍA SPANISH INSTITUTE TRANSLATION PRIZE
A masterful novel exploring womanhood, class, and tradition in 1950s Colombia
From her home in Paris, Lina recalls the story of three women whose lives unfold in the conservative city of Barranquilla in Colombia. Amid parties at the Country Club and strolls along the promenade in Puerto Colombia unfurls a story of sensuality suppressed by violence; a narrative of oppression in which Dora, Catalina, and Beatriz are victims of a patriarchy that is woven into the social fabric.
In Lina’s obsessive account of the past, this masterful novel transforms personal anecdotes into a profound panorama of Colombian society towards the end of the 1950s. From private memories to historical reality, the structure of this book is full of precision, poetry, and exile’s insight.
Standing above and apart from her contemporaries of the Latin American literary boom, Marvel Moreno narrates a reality that describes the private lives of the people of Barranquilla while offering a compelling perspective on the human condition.
“One of the hundred most influential women in the history of Colombia.”—Cromos magazine
Marvel Moreno was born in Barranquilla, Colombia, in 1939. She maintained a close relationship with the members of the “Barranquilla Group” including Gabriel García Márquez. She is well known in Colombia and is considered one of the most important Colombian writers. Her novel December Breeze was a finalist in the Plaza y Janés International Literary Prize in 1985 and was translated into Italian and French. In 1989 she received the Grinzane-Cavour prize awarded in Italy for the best foreign book. She died in Paris in 1995.
Isabel Adey is a translator and editor working with English, Spanish and German. A former winner of the Emerging Translators Programme at the Goethe-Institut, her work has been featured in
Latin American Literature Today,
Art in Translation, and
Glasgow Review of Books. She has translated fiction and nonfiction by authors including Ulrike Draesner and Alfons Kaiser. She holds an MSc in Translation from Heriot-Watt University and has taught Spanish-to-English translation to postgraduate level.
Charlotte Coombe is a British literary translator working from French and Spanish into English. A two-time Pen Translates award winner, she was shortlisted for the Valle Inclán Translation Prize 2019 for her translation of Fish Soup by Margarita García Robayo. She has translated fiction and poetry by authors such as Abnousse Shalmani, Eduardo Berti, Ricardo Romero, Antonio Díaz Oliva, and Jimena González.
