Elvira Navarro – författare

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.

"e;In this impressionistic, dreamlike collection, Navarro deploys surrealism to comic, haunting effect."e; -New York TimesThese eleven stories from one of Granta's "e;Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists"e; combine gritty surrealism with explosive interior meditations, traversing the fickle, often terrifying terrain between madness and freedom. In the title story, a so-called "e;non-inventor"e; brings snow-white rabbits to an island inhabited exclusively by birds, with horrific results. In "e;Myotragus"e; a privileged man's understanding of the world is violently disrupted by the sight of a creature long thought extinct. Elsewhere in these stories that map dingy hotel rooms, shape-shifting cities, and graveyards, an unsightly "e;paw"e; grows from a writer's earlobe and a grandmother floats silently in the corner of the room.

A young couple's washing machine fills with blood; a man saves animals who have been hit along the highway, turning his home in a peculiar zoo; the security guard of a half-built housing development suffers from hallucinations; a young woman struggles to understand the cruel neglect of the Parisian suburbs. This is a world of precarious jobs, towns in the middle of nowhere, abandoned buildings, and cities that are nothing more than blocks of concrete whose contours Elvira Navarro distorts to the point of giving reality the consistency of a nightmare. In an almost imperceptible way, the disturbing infiltrates the lives of these men and women until they find themselves alone at the end of a dark road, afraid to turn around.