German Room

How do you will a life into order? Adrift in Germany, a pregnant, aimless Argentine and her small circle of friends try and fail to find out.

Fall in Heidelberg, and in a student residence a not-student, a woman from Argentina, is busy not figuring out what to do next. She’s pregnant. Shanice, a Japanese student she had barely befriended, has died. Shanice’s mother has arrived from Tokyo and will not leave. And Javier Miguel, a fellow Argentine, is frantic that his sister back home might be overly involved with a local psychic. The German Room is a novel of not-moving on, of not-growing up, of not-failing better. As fall turns to winter, things change but nothing is different, and comedy and tragedy are harder to tell apart. And in Carla Maliandi’s hands, entropy becomes a vibrant, life-affirming creative force. 

Carla Maliandi was born in Venezuela in 1976 but grew up in Argentina, where she now lives. She is an award-winning playwright, theatre director, university lecturer and writer. She has written and directed five theatre plays, which were staged in Buenos Aires as well as in different international theatre festivals. She has also co-written several other plays. She is part of the writers’ collective Rioplatensas as part of which she directs a literary journal and a TV programme. Her plays Espejo en el desierto (Mirror in the desert) and Regen (Rain) appeared in an anthology published by the National Theatre Institute of Argentina, and her short story Indio (Indian) was included in a short story collection entitled Zona de cuentos (Short Story Zone). The German Room is her debut novel, chosen by several critics as one of the best books to come out of Argentina in 2017. It is also her first book to be translated into English.

Frances Riddle has translated numerous Spanish-language authors, including Isabel Allende, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Claudia Piñeiro, and Leila Guerriero. Her work has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize. Originally from Houston, Texas, she lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.