The Rooftop - Softcover

Fernanda Trías And Translated By Annie McDermott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1913867048 ISBN 13: 9781913867041

Publisher: Charco Press, 2021

Synopsis

‘The world is this house’, says Clara while she is trying to protect her beloved ones from the world – yes, that one outside their house walls – which seems to threaten them more and more. Clara entrenches herself with her father and her daughter Flor in a dark apartment that inevitably crumbles on them. The roof becomes their last recess of freedom. A caged bird is the only witness of Clara’s fear and resistance against those she thinks are trying to destroy her. ‘Are threats and pain external or inside our own bodies? Where is violence’s root? What are we afraid of? Is there a possibility to find a roof to finally being able to breathe? What are our umbilical cords?’. Fernanda Trías does not answer these questions – impossible for anyone – about instinct, civilization and taboos, instead she gives them shape and dives deep into them a with a grotesque and forceful history written with agility and a Kafkaesque sense of humour. Rooftopis a claustrophobic novel about freedom, and also about fear, violence, motherhood and loss.

‘Exceptional’-Inés Martín Diego, ABC Spain

About this title

About the Author

Fernanda Trías is a Uruguayan writer. She was born in Montevideo in 1976. She is the author of three novels and two short story collections. In 2004 she won a Unesco scholarship to write in Camac, an artists’ residence in Marnay-sur-Seine. She lived for five years in the medieval village of Provins and a few months in London. She spent one year in Berlin and two years in Buenos Aires. Trías earned a Master’s degree in creative writing from New York University and was disciple of the Uruguayan writer Mario Levrero. She integrated anthologies of new narrative in Colombia, the United States, Uruguay, Peru, Germany (Neues vom Fluss: Junge Literatur aus Argentinien, Uruguay und Paraguay, 2010) and UK (Uruguayan Women Writers, 2012). Her novel Rooftop (La azotea, 2001) was selected among the best books of the year by the El País Cultural Supplement, and won the third prize of edited narrative of the Uruguayan National Literature Prize (2002). In 2006 she received the BankBoston Foundation Prize for National Culture. She was one of the “Voices for the New Millennium”, organized by Cornell University in 2013. She currently lectures in Creative Writing at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Her most recent novel Mugre Rosa (Pink Slime) has just come out in Uruguay (2020).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

If they came right now they’d find me face-up on the bed, in the same position I threw myself down in around midnight. Eleven thirty-eight, to be precise: the time when I took my last look at the clock and when everything came to an end. I gave Flor a kiss, told her to sleep tight and she closed her eyes as if it were a night like any other.The candle burnt out a while ago and now the darkness is swallowing the walls. It’s as if the whole world knew and was crouching down in wait, all because of me. I don’t know what time it is but the later it gets the less frightened I feel, and the less I feel anything at all. Whatever happens, they’ll have to break down the door, because I put the chain on and wedged the chest of drawers against it. Dad and Flor are in the other room and in a funny way they’re keeping each other company. Not me; I have no one, but I’m determined to stay awake as I wait.I hear a siren in the distance: an ambulance or a police car, I can never tell which. As it comes closer, my heart pounds in my chest. The sound turns shrill and leaves me dazed as it goes by under the window. Red light flashed onto the walls for an instant, like tiny flame-figures dancing in the air. Now the siren fades away and I’m back in the shadowy silence of the room. Alone. I have to convince myself that what’s in the other room isn’t a man, isn’t my dad. Tucked up side by side they looked like they were sleeping.It’s hard to believe I had a life before this one, a job, a house, which I now remember nothing about. For me, real life began with Julia’s death, went on for four years and came to an end today.

Edition details

• Publisher: Charco Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1913867048
• ISBN 13: 9781913867041
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 140