Brenda Lozano – författare

A bewitching novel by Brenda Lozano, one of the most prominent voices of the new generation of Latin American writers.''You can''t really know another woman until you know yourself.''Weaving together two parallel narratives, this is the story of Feliciana, an indigenous curandera (healer), and of Zoë, a journalist: two women drawn together by the murder of Feliciana''s cousin Paloma.In the tiny village of San Felipe in Jalisco province, where traditional ways of life and belief are a present reality, Feliciana tells the story of her life, her community''s acceptance of her as a genuine curandera and the difficulties faced by her cousin Paloma who is a Muxe (both male and female), in her case a trans woman.Growing up in Mexico City, the heart of modern Mexico, Zoë attempts to find her way in a hostile world made for men, as she reflects on what drew her to Feliciana and Paloma, and her own relationship with the innate powers of a curandera.This extraordinary novel envisions the writer as healer, one who uses El Lenguaje (Language) to read El Libro (The Book) that contains the mystery of the world, and offers a generous and distinctly female way of understanding the complex world we all inhabit.Translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary

The beguiling story of a young journalist whose investigation of a murder leads her to the most legendary healer in all of Mexico, from one of the most prominent voices of a new generation of Latin American writers

Paloma is dead. But before she was murdered, before she was even Paloma, she was a traditional healer named Gaspar. Before she was murdered, she taught her cousin Feliciana the secrets of the ceremonies known as veladas, and about the Language and the Book that unlock their secrets.

Sent to report on Paloma's murder, Zoe meets Feliciana in the mountain village of San Felipe. There, the two women's lives twist around each other in a danse macabre. Feliciana tells Zoe the story of her struggle to become an accepted healer in her community, and Zoe begins to understand the hidden history of her own experience as a woman, finding her way in a hostile environment shaped by and for men.

Weaving together two parallel narratives that mirror and refract one another, this extraordinary novel envisions the healer as storyteller and the writer as healer, and offers a generous and nuanced understanding of a world that can be at turns violent and exultant, cruel and full of hope.

"A story of the world's repeated failure to control feminine power and the sheer magic of language itself. An enthralling, passionate story about secrets both holy and profane." -Catherine Lacey, author of Pew and Nobody Is Ever Missing