Seeing Red

Lina Meruane is one of the most prominent female voices in Chilean contemporary narrative. A novelist, essayist, and cultural journalist, she is the author of a host of short stories appeared in various anthologies and magazines in Spanish, English, German and French. She has also published a collection of short stories, Las Infantas (Chile 1998, Argentina 2010),as well as three novels, Postuma (Chile 2000, Portugal 2001), Cercada (Chile 2000) and Fruta Podrida (Chile & Mexico 2007). The latter won the Best Unpublished Novel Priza awarded by Chile's National Council of the Culture and the Arts in 2006. She is the winner of the Anna Seghers Prize, awarded to her by the Akademie der Kunste, in Berlin, Germany, 2011. Meruane received the prestigious Mexican Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Prize in 2012 with the publication of her most recent novel, Sangre en el ojo (Seeing Red). Meruane has received writing grants from the Arts Development Fund of Chile (1997), the Guggenheim Foundation (2004) and National Endowment for the Arts (2010). Meruane is a cultural journalist, columnist and stringer for written media, and currently serves as editor of Brutas Editoras, an independent publishing house located in New York City. Holder of a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from New York University, Meruane currently teaches World and Latin American Literature and Creative Writing at NYU. Megan McDowell is a literary translator of many modern and contemporary South American authors, including Alejandro Zambra, Arturo Fontaine, Carlos Busqued, Alvaro Bisama, and Juan Emar. Her translations have been published in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Words Without Borders, Mandorla, and Vice, among others. She lives in Santiago, Chile and New York.

"Astonishing ... Meruane's authorial gaze is unflinching. Through the mesh of veins, she holds a microscope not only to the condition suffered by her alter ego, but to the ties between the protagonist and those on whom she is forced to depend, ties strained by Lina's history of illness and her loss of sight. Lina resists all attempts to corral her into victimhood and insists on wielding her agency like a weapon. Her manipulations of Ignacio provide a visceral antidote to infantilizing narratives of illness; Lina's behavior is predatory rather than passive, and Seeing Red becomes a searing commentary on the limits of family relationships and the cruelty that, under duress, we are capable of exerting on those we love." -- Charlotte Whittle, Los Angeles Times "An enigmatic mixture of autobiography and fiction ... The story reveals its truths through immediacy of description--viscous, repulsive, and beautiful." -- The New Yorker "What resonates about Seeing Red is how intimate it feels, not simply in the manner that memoir is personal but the way that Meruane takes us insider her visionless existence, a world in which "seeing" the realities of life and love do not require sight." -- Lori Feathers, BTBA 2017 Judge "Meruane's corrosive writing is a meditation on a soul blinded not by illness, but by the peculiar destructive spirit produced by self-pity -- that dark feeling familiar to any who has suffered their own body's treason. In other words, all of us. Seeing Red's spine is a deliciously perverse love story, loaded with surprising, sickening, wonderful erotic material centred in the eyeballs." -- Alvaro Enrigue (author of Sudden Death), TANK Magazine Summer Reading List 2016 "A story told by Meruane with vivid, unflinching language that will occasionally make readers squirm with its beautiful, brutal honesty." -- Beatriz Terrazas, Dallas Morning News "Intense, physical, flipping from sensual to gory, Seeing Red is a book about degeneration and offers an exhilarating 'fresh eye', as the author puts it, on what it is to be alive." -- Joanna Walsh, The National "Blurring the lines between fiction and memoir, Meruane's first novel translated into English explores mortality, identity, and personal transformation... This is a penetrating autobiographical novel, and for English-Language readers this work serves as a stunning introduction to a remarkable author." -- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "From this moment of darkness, the narrative hurtles forward, obsessed by Lina's physical and emotional pains, which are examined with a vibrant, Kahloesque fascination. The narrative is also interested in how Lina's pain stretches out, changing her relationships with the objects and people around her." -- M. Lynx Qualey, Electric Lit "The writing is jagged, sharp, and direct, serving as a counterpoint to the careful movements and stillness prescribed for our heroine. Short chapters of dense blocks of text shape the novel into a bristling, staccato torrent of vivid imagery and psychological roilings... Lina's chronicle is simultaneously disturbing and lyrical." -- Rachel Jagareski, Foreword Reviews "Seeing Red is not only a story about becoming blind, it is a story about fear, trust, and the limits of love. The reader will walk on these pages as if blind, surrounded by sharp objects that inflict pain, nostalgia, loneliness... it comes to life with a strong and beautiful translation by Megan McDowell, who renders and magnifies Lina Meruane's visceral and blinding language." -- Sylvia Aguilar-Zeleny, El Paso Times "Meruane is considered the best contemporary Chilean novelist, but she's really one of the best contemporary novelists overall, and you'll learn why if you read this harrowing semi-autobiographical account of an academician who suffers a stroke that leaves her temporarily blind. Yes, it's an account of frailty that uses blindness as metaphor, but more than that, it's a scorching examination of how being utterly dependent on someone--even someone you deeply love--can make you a monster." -- Literary Hub One of Literary Hub's "13 Translated Books by Women You Should Read" "Mesmerizing sentences pile high in this short book, where far more is happening than immediately seems. The failures of the body are set alongside the feats of the imagination to brilliant effect." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Seeing Red is the triumphant realization of a stunning artistic vision, a novel as black and bitter and bloody (and beautiful) as its central conceit. It's a novel that's hard to describe. But you know it's great when you read it." -- Aaron Bady, The Nation "An intriguing short novel ... A female writer who is losing her sight probes the meaning of language, genre, and the reader's expectations... Meruane fashions a challenging metafiction that ventures into fresh and provocative places." -- Kirkus Reviews "In an autobiographical work full of discomfort, Meruane spares nothing negative, and Seeing Red is astounding and essential for it." -- Greg Walklin, Colorado Review "The prose, the syntax pulses with life and color. The sentences spill over with anger, nastiness, love and desperation." -- David Naimon, Between the Covers "A precise, gorgeously crafted autofiction that explores illness and disability, and the fears and logic of a person who's been betrayed by their own body but refuses to take on the role of a passive victim. This is a swift, dark, vicious book. I've never read anything quite like it. --Cari Luna, author of The Revolution of Every Day "Meruane's ability to take readers into the experience of sight loss is extraordinary. Her descriptions are fresh, immediate and memorable, inviting comparisons with passages from Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's great novel Blindness." -- Ann Morgan, A Year of Reading the World "Lina Meruane... writes with visceral intensity and a relentless energy that lays bare the violence of the everyday... at once nightmarish and grippingly realistic." -- Helen, bookseller at Drawn & Quarterly (Staff Pick: Best of 2016) "Aided by the fine translation from Megan McDowell, newcomers to Meruane's spare prose and caustic wit... will admire the strange force and clarity of this novel that is as painstaking as it is wryly painful." -- Forrest Roth, The Collagist "A startling, honest portrayal of one woman's descent into blindness and depression, and the lines of love that float out toward her, 'spiraling and elastic,' that she pushes away, and slowly learns to reach toward... Part meditation, part thriller, Seeing Red is a remarkable work showcasing the talents of a fine writer." -- Laura Farmer, Cedar Rapids Gazette "Stunning ... As intimate as it is objective, the novel shows how blocked eyesight leads to a heightening of Lucina's other senses, especially those of perspective, empathy, and, above all, language. Seeing nothing but envisioning everything in immediate, hypnotic detail, Lucina visits [Santiago], undergoes a grueling operation, and watches her romance grow from mere love to a literal--if necessary--eye-for-an-eye devotion." -- Laurie G., Politics & Prose Bookstore, Washington, DC (Staff Pick) "With propulsive language and hallucinatory verve, Lina Meruane explores the relationship between identity and illness. Shifting between New York City and Santiago, between the world of sight and blindness, SEEING RED is a masterclass in taut and poetic storytelling. What Meruane manages in 150 pages is simply miraculous." -- Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX (Staff Pick) "An unsettling and disquieting look at a woman's descent into blindness ... With a first-person narrative chronicling her own ocular decline, SEEING RED bears witness to the inter- and intrapersonal struggles that force the narrator to make sense of the relationships around her, all while relying upon those very people for support, aid, and comfort. Meruane's gifted prose lends the story both immediacy and persuasiveness." -- Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books, Portland, OR (Staff Pick) "In this fierce work of autofiction, Meruane's Lucina (sometimes called Lina) resists the passive position of patient with "an uppercase No," and her anger allows a rare and powerful intimacy. Those hoping for a neat and satisfying resolution will be disappointed, but the true shape of illness is neither neat nor satisfying, and Seeing Red excels in expressing the full scale of the horror and essential uncertainty of being betrayed by one's own body." -- Amy Berkowitz, author of Tender Points "Meruane writes further into, rather than through or around, blindness. Her language pulses with the psychological terror of the body's betrayal; it pulls at the seams of the self, unleashing something deep within. This is not a fictionalized memoir of transformation and recovery, but a book that burns in your hands, something sharp and terrifying that bites back." -- Anna Zalokostas, Full Stop "Instead of a journey into blindness the immediacy of the situation makes it a journey into understanding and life beyond being able to see...at the core this really is a love story, an exploration of what it means to "unconditionally" love somebody, would a parent actually give up an eye for their child?" -- Tony Messenger, Messengers Booker blog "One of Chile's Top Ten Contemporary Writers ... Her compelling exploration of this rapid change of events for the young narrator is compelling and disconcerting all at once, making for a fascinating read." -- The Culture Trip "A bristling, staccato torrent of vivid imagery and psychological roilings ... simultaneously disturbing and lyrical. ...Translator Megan McDowell has an excellent ear for Meruane's prose and skillfully exposes its darkly humorous veins. Seeing Red is a captivating, multilayered debut from a strong young writer." -- Rachel Jagareski, Foreword Reviews "A brilliant exploration of the human condition and exercise in experimental prose... a subversive and feminist text." -- Tara Cheesman-Olmsted, The Rumpus "A vivid understanding of what it is like to lose one's sight ... Disturbing and uncomfortable but so worth the read." -- Melissa Beck, The Bookbinder's Daughter "SEEING RED introduces an exciting and vital new voice into the English language, a visceral examination of the fragility and determination of a woman faced with the unknown." -- Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA "Meruane's voice is searing." -- Chris Schahfer, Chicago Center for Literature and Photography "The reader will walk on these pages as if blind, surrounded by sharp objects that inflict pain, nostalgia, loneliness. Seeing Red is not only a story about becoming blind, it is a story about fear, trust, and the limits of love." -- Sylvia Aguilar, Un Alma Cercana "This livewire of a novel bursts from the narrator's blood flooded retina in front of our own eyes." -- Sofia Fara "Meruane is one of the one or two greats in the new generation of Chilean writers who promise to have it all ... [her] prose has great literary force: it emerges from the hammer blows of conscience, but also from the ungraspable, and from pain."--Roberto Bolano "Meruane's writing is acid, so corrosive, that sometimes sentences dissolve before meeting the end that they deserved." -- Alvaro Enrique, author of Sudden Death "A merciless book." --Sylvia Molloy, author of Signs of Borges "When a book is so special, nothing one says about it can do full justice to its quality. One wants to use the review to send a message to the reader in capital letters: 'Don't waste more time; buy the book, read it, and then tell me what you thought.'" -- Luiz Paulo Fasccioli, Rascunho (Brazil) "Lina Meruane avoids sentimentality with a burst of genius: she resorts to black humor and closes the book without closing it." -- Tiago Ferro, Peixe Eletrico (Brazil) "A powerful novel." -- Federico Falco, one of Granta's Best Young Spanish Novelists "[Seeing Red] describes, through sight as metaphor, a world of uncertain horizons opposed to each other...Rather than as a victim, she portrays her narrator with a final effect that reminds the reader of the