Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
Colombia’s Pacific coast, where everyday life entails warding off the brutal forces of nature. In this constant struggle, nothing is taken for granted.
Damaris lives with her fisherman husband in a shack on a bluff overlooking the sea. Childless and at that age “when women dry up,” as her uncle puts it, she is eager to adopt an orphaned puppy. But this act may bring more than just affection into her home.
The Bitch is written in a prose as terse as the villagers, with storms―both meteorological and emotional―lurking around each corner. Beauty and dread live side by side in this poignant exploration of the many meanings of motherhood and love.
Pilar Quintana is a Colombian author. She debuted with Cosquillas en la lengua in 2003, and published Coleccionistas de polvos raros in 2007. Her latest novel, The Bitch, won the PEN Translates award in the UK and the prestigious Colombian Biblioteca de Narrativa Prize. The Bitch is the first of her works to be translated into English.
Lisa Dillman translates from Spanish, Catalan, and Latin American writers and teaches at Emory University. Her translations include Such Small Hands (winner of the 2018 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Award) by Andrés Barba and The Transmigration of Bodies (shortlisted for the 2018 Dublin Literary Award) by Yuri Herrera among others.
Pilar Quintana’s The Bitch is almost perfect in her simplicity. A novel that is read without pause, in which everything comes together in the success of a small drama told in a serene, firm and luminous way. Pilar Quintana masterfully creates the atmosphere of a small Colombian Pacific town in which, naturally emerge all the elements that lead to the tragedy; an intimate and lonely tragedy, lost in a poor and heavenly corner of the country. Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Colombia
We believe the novel makes a great claim vindicating social imaginaries for women in our society. The novel questions motherhood as the only path for fulfilment and as never-ending source of love. In its brevity, it manages to construct a structured story that represents the new Colombian novel: with precise descriptions, conflict, and well-constructed characters. Biblioteca EPM, Colombia
| Author | Pilar Quintana |
|---|---|
| Nominating Library | Biblioteca EPM, Colombia, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Colombia |
| Publisher | World Editions |
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