Discontent: An audacious, darkly funny, perfect holiday read - Softcover

Serrano, Beatriz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1529952239 ISBN 13: 9781529952230

Publisher: Vintage, 2026

Synopsis

Life can’t go on like this – can it?

A sexy and hilarious Spanish bestseller, where a young woman's office persona threatens to crack when she’s forced to attend her company’s annual retreat.

'Tremendously entertaining' Guardian
'A wild ride' Express
'An impressive new comic talent' Daily Telegraph
'Wry and incisive... very funny' New York Times

On the surface, Marisa’s life looks enviable. She lives in a nice apartment in the heart of Madrid, her friendly neighbour and lover Pablo lives downstairs, and she’s risen quickly through the ranks at a successful advertising agency.

And yet Marisa hates her job and everything about it. Over one hot summer she finds herself in danger of being exposed when she’s forced to deliver a talk on creativity at a horrendous team-building retreat. Surrounded by psychopathic bosses, flirty facilitators, and an excess of drugs, Marisa is pushed to the brink of a complete spiral.

Discontent is a bold, biting novel about acting on our wilder impulses to reclaim our lives from work, for everyone who has ever wanted more: more time, more meaning, more connection.

'Serrano writes with a caustic flair for detail, with charm and utter hilarity. Absolutely brilliant' Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution

‘I adored our heroine... A razor-sharp debut’ Anna Dorn, author of Perfume and Pain

'A love song to the listless and lonely of the LinkedIn age' Ariel Courage, author of Bad Nature

About this title

About the Author

Beatriz Serrano (Author)
Beatriz Serrano is a writer and a journalist who has written for publications such as BuzzFeed, Vanity Fair, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, S Moda, and Vogue. She works for El País and, along with writer Guillermo Alonso, co-directs the prizewinning podcast Arsénico Caviar. Discontent is her first novel. She currently lives in Madrid.

Mara Faye Lethem (Translator)
Mara Faye Lethem is a writer, researcher, and literary translator from Catalan and Spanish. Her translation of Irene Solà’s When I Sing, Mountains Dance was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Barrios Book in Translation Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, and the Prix Jan Michalski, and winner of the Nota Bene Prize and the Lewis Galantière Award. She won the inaugural Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award for Max Besora’s The Adventures and Misadventures of Joan Orpí. Authors she has translated include Patricio Pron, Max Besora, Javier Calvo, Marta Orriols, Toni Sala, and Alicia Kopf. Her translations have been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and several English PEN awards.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1529952239
• ISBN 13: 9781529952230
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192