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Not a River
Selva Almada
Annie McDermott
The novel tells the story of two friends, Enero and El Negro, who take Tilo, the teenage son of Eusebio – their recently deceased friend – fishing to the Paraná River. While they drink and cook and talk and dance, they try to overcome the ghosts of their past and those of the present: their mood altered by wine and torpor. This intimate, peculiar moment connecting the lives of these three men also links them to the lives of the local inhabitants of this watery universe that runs by its own laws.
There are losses, premature deaths. But there is also the stubborn vitality of nature: a bush covered with ancient trees, animals, birds; the river bearing life in its entrails, the people born and raised in this landscape which they protect tooth and nail against intruders.
This story, which flows like water, talks about the love between friends, the love of a mother for her daughters, and the love of the islanders for their river and everything that lives in it.
This masterful novel reveals once again Selva Almada’s unique voice and extraordinary sensitivity, allowing its characters to shine and express in action what the depths of their souls harbour.
One of the Best Books of 2020 in Clarín and La Nación
Shortlisted for the Mario Vargas Llosa Novel Prize
Selva Almada
Compared to Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, Flannery O?Connor, Sara Gallardo and Juan Carlos Onetti, Selva Almada (Entre Ríos, Argentina, 1973) is considered one of the most powerful voices of contemporary Argentinian and Latin American literature and one of the most influential feminist intellectuals of the region. Including her début The Wind that Lays Waste, she has published three novels, a book of short stories, a book of journalistic fiction and a film diary (written on the set of Lucrecia Martel?s most recent film Zama , based on Antonio di Benedetto?s novel). She has been finalist for the Medifé Prize, the Rodolfo Walsh Award and of the Tigre Juan Award. Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Swedish and Turkish. This is her fourth book to appear in English after The Wind that Lays Waste (Winner of the EIBF First Book Award 2019), Dead Girls (2020), and Brickmakers (2021).Annie McDermott is the translator of a dozen books from Spanish and Portuguese, by such writers as Mario Levrero, Ariana Harwicz, Brenda Lozano, Fernanda Trías and Lídia Jorge. She was awarded the Premio Valle-Inclán for her translation of Wars of the Interior by Joseph Zárate, and her translation of Brickmakers by Selva Almada was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. She has previously lived in Mexico City and São Paulo, Brazil, and is now based in Hastings, in the UK.