National Book Award for Translated Literature
The Bitch
On Colombia's Pacific coast, in a poor village pressed between the sea and the jungle, middle-aged Damaris takes in an orphaned puppy and begins to love it as the daughter she never had. Loneliness, thwarted motherhood, a cooled marriage, and a harsh natural world converge as affection gradually turns into obsession and violence.
Work Information
A compact tropical gothic in which excessive love for a dog exposes the violence hidden inside loneliness and loss.
The Bitch is the English title of Pilar Quintana's Spanish-language novel La perra, published in Japanese as Mesuinu. Set on Colombia's Pacific coast, where natural beauty and violence coexist, it follows Damaris after she brings a female puppy into her home. Her wish to be a mother, the silences in her marriage, and memories of poverty and death embedded in the landscape rise to the surface. In spare, open prose, the novel presses on the boundary between loving and possessing.
Review Summaries
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Readers often respond to the restrained prose and humid setting, while some find the bleak turn of events and the protagonist's emotional intensity hard to approach. Its refusal to make motherhood consoling leaves a lasting, unsettling aftertaste.
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Many readers value how much the brief novel contains: coastal village life, marital tension, and attachment to an animal are rendered with sharp economy. Some see that compression as powerful, while others find the cruel scenes and dark ending difficult.
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The novel is praised for its psychological sharpness, spare prose, and vivid treatment of love, betrayal, and abandonment. Its brief scenes accumulate into a forceful portrait of the protagonist's disturbing transformation.
Book Information
- Publisher
- World Editions
- Published
- 2020-08-04
- Pages
- 128 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.45 x 1.52 x 20.07 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781642860597
- ISBN-10
- 164286059X
- Price
- 6778 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Mystery & Thrillers/Thrillers/Psychological & Suspense
2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS TRANSLATED LITERATURE FINALIST In Colombia’s brutal jungle, childless Damaris develops an intense and ultimately doomed relationship with an orphaned puppy. “The magic of this sparse novel is its ability to talk about many things, all of them important, while seemingly talking about something else entirely. What are those things? Violence, loneliness, resilience, cruelty. Quintana works wonders with her disillusioned, no-nonsense, powerful prose.” Juan Gabriel Vásquez , author of The Sound of Things Falling “ The Bitch is a novel of true violence. Artist that she is, Pilar Quintana uncovers wounds we didn’t know we had, shows us their beauty, and then throws a handful of salt into them.” Yuri Herrera , author of Signs Preceding the End of the World 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, the same year the Hay Festival selected her as one of the most promising young authors of Latin America. Her latest novel, The Bitch , is 2020 National Book Awards Translated Literature Finalist, has won the prestigious Colombian Biblioteca de Narrativa Prize, and was selected for several Best Books of 2017 lists, as well as being chosen as one of the most valuable objects to preserve for future generations in a marble time capsule in Bogotá. The Bitch is the first of her works to be translated into English. LISA DILLMAN lives in Georgia, USA, where she translates Spanish, Catalan, and Latin American writers and teaches at Emory University. Some of her recent translations include Such Small Hands (winner of the 2018 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Award) by Andrés Barba; Signs Preceding the End of the World (winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award), Kingdom Cons , and The Transmigration of Bodies (shortlisted for the 2018 Dublin Literary Award) by Yuri Herrera; and Breathing Through the Wound and A Million Drops by Víctor del Árbol.
Reviews
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Loved this book. Would definitely recommend.
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Recommended to our writing group. Heartbreaking and concise story. Very well written. Recommend.
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I found this dispiriting and dull. I enjoy literary fiction but I like a larger world view