A provocative new novel from the author ranked among Granta’s “Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists”
Globally acclaimed as a relentless innovator and a meticulous explorer of the psyche’s most obscure alleyways, Elvira Navarro here delivers an ambitious tale of feminine friendship, madness, a radically changing city, and the vulnerability that makes us divulge our most shameful secrets. It begins as Elisa transcribes the chaotic testimony of her roommate Susana, acting as part-therapist, part-confessor as Susana reveals the gripping account of her strange sexual urges and the one man who can satisfy them. But is Susana telling the truth? And what to make of the story that follows, where Elisa considers her own life failures, blending her literary ambitions with her deep need for catharsis? And then, one last surprise makes us question everything we have just read. Masterfully uncovering the insecurity that lurks just beneath the surface of every stable life,
A Working Woman shows Elvira Navarro’s strength for mordant storytelling and breathtaking insight into alienation, confirming her status as one of the leading voices of her generation.
Über den Autor
Elvira Navarra was named by
Granta magazine one of the “Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists” in 2010, and she was declared one of the major Spanish voices of the future by the magazine
El Cultural in 2013. The author of five novels and short story collections, she has received numerous awards and honors for her work. Translated into French, Swiss, Italian, Turkish, and Arabic, Navarro lives in Barcelona.
Christina Mac Sweeney was awarded the 2016 Valle Inclán Translation Prize for her translation of Valeria Luiselli’s
The Story of My Teeth, and her work has been shortlisted for a number of other prizes. Her translations of Daniel Saldaña París’s novel
Among Strange Victims (finalist in the 2017 Best Translated Book Award), and Eduardo Rabasa’s
A Zero Sum Game both appeared in 2016. She has also published translations, articles and interviews on wide a variety of platforms, plus in three anthologies:
México20,
Lunatics,
Lovers & Poets: Twelve stories after Cervantes and Shakespeare, and
Crude Words: Contemporary Writing from Venezuela. She is now working on texts by Julián Herbert and Verónica Gerber Bicecci.