Umami (Hardcover)

Umami By Laia Jufresa, Sophie Hughes (Translator) Cover Image
By Laia Jufresa, Sophie Hughes (Translator)
$21.99
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Description


Shortlisted for the Best Translated Fiction Book Award, 2017
"Ms. Jufresa: Where the f*# did you learn to tell a story so well?" -- lvaro Enrigue, award-winning author of Sudden Death

As heard on NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon

It started with a drowning.

Deep in the heart of Mexico City, where five houses cluster around a sun-drenched courtyard, lives Ana, a precocious twelve-year-old who spends her days buried in Agatha Christie novels to forget the mysterious death of her little sister years earlier. Over the summer she decides to plant a milpa in her backyard, and as she digs the ground and plants her seeds, her neighbors in turn delve into their past. The ripple effects of grief, childlessness, illness and displacement saturate their stories, secrets seep out and questions emerge -- Who was my wife? Why did my Mom leave? Can I turn back the clock? And how could a girl who knew how to swim drown?

In prose that is dazzlingly inventive, funny and tender, Laia Jufresa immerses us in the troubled lives of her narrators, deftly unpicking their stories to offer a darkly comic portrait of contemporary Mexico, as whimsical as it is heart-wrenching.


Coverage from NPR



Product Details
ISBN: 9781780748917
ISBN-10: 1780748914
Publisher: ONEWorld Publications
Publication Date: September 13th, 2016
Pages: 240
Language: English