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Layla Martínez is the author of two nonfiction books in Spanish, Surrogate Pregnancy and Utopia is not an Island, as well as stories and articles in numerous anthologies. She has translated essays and novels, writes about music for El Salto, and about television for La Última Hora. More about this author >
Sophie Hughes is a translator of Spanish and Italian literature. Her translation of The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019, and her translation of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season was shortlisted for the same prize. More about this author >
Annie McDermott is a translator working from Spanish and Portuguese. Her published and forthcoming translations include Empty Words and The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero; Dead Girls and Brickmakers by Selva Almada; Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz, co-translated with Carolina Orloff; and Loop by Brenda Lozano. More about this author >
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Translated from Spanish
From the publisher:
The house breathes. The house contains bodies and secrets. The house is visited by ghosts, by angels that line the roof like insects, and by saints that burn the bedsheets with their haloes. It was built by a smalltime hustler as a means of controlling his wife, and even after so many years, their daughter and her granddaughter can’t leave. They may be witches or they may just be angry, but when the mysterious disappearance of a young boy draws unwanted attention, the two isolated women, already subjects of public scorn, combine forces with the spirits that haunt them in pursuit of something that resembles justice.
In this lush translation by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott, Layla Martínez’s eerie debut novel is class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun. This vision of a broken family in our unjust world places power in the hands of the eccentric, the radical, and the desperate.
