La perra es una novela sobre el amor de las madres, la traición, la lealtad, la culpa y la soledad de las relaciones humanas.

En un pequeño pueblo del Pacífico donde confluyen la belleza y la violencia de la región y conviven, separados, la riqueza y la pobreza, los blancos y los negros, tiene lugar la historia de Damaris.

Damaris, una negra del Pacífico ya en la madurez, lleva muchos años viviendo con Rogelio. Su turbulenta relación ha estado marcada por la búsqueda infructuosa de un hijo: prueban de todo, y aun así Damaris no consigue quedarse embarazada. Perdida toda esperanza, Damaris encuentra una nueva ilusión cuando se le presenta la oportunidad de adoptar una perra. Esta nueva e intensa relación con el animal será para Damaris la experiencia que la obligará a reflexionar sobre el instinto y la maternidad.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The accomplished novel by Pilar Quintana has arrived to Alfaguara, winner of the Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana Prize, a National Book Award finalist, and translated in more than twenty languages.

In Colombia's brutal jungle, childless Damaris develops an intense and ultimately doomed relationship with an orphaned puppy.

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.

A 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE FINALIST

By the Colombian author of The Bitch, a 2020 National Book Award Finalist and PEN Awards Winner

Claudia is an impressionable eight-year-old girl, trying to understand the world through the eyes of the adults around her. But her hardworking father hardly speaks a word, while her unhappy mother spends her days reading celebrity lifestyle magazines, tending to her enormous collection of plants, and filling Claudia's head with stories about women who end their lives in tragic ways. Then an interloper arrives, disturbing the delicate balance of family life, and Claudia's world starts falling apart. In this strikingly vivid portrait of Cali, Colombia, Claudia's acute observations remind us that children are capable of discerning extremely complex realities even if they cannot fully understand them. In Abyss, Quintana leads us brilliantly into the lonely heart of the child we have all once been, driven by fear of abandonment.

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 V squez, author of The Sound of Things Falling

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.

Una niña contempla con una agudeza y una sensibilidad extraordinaria el conflictivo matrimonio de sus padres. Entre la actitud desdeñosa y las confidencias imprudentes de ella y la amargura y el silencio obstinado de él, intenta construir la realidad que la rodea, conjeturando, adivinando, interpretando lo que no se dice, o lo que se dice a medias.

La vida de Claudia transcurre con normalidad en Cali, una infancia sin preocupaciones, como tantas otras, porque todas las familias felices se parecen. Pero como cada una es infeliz a su manera, de repente irrumpe en la ecuación alguien ajeno a ella que acaba con la armonía. Y entonces ocurre: la vida se convierte en otra cosa cuando se quiebra la línea recta del camino, desbaratada en favor de esos monstruos sin nombre, martilleos constantes hacia la agonía de sufrir cada minuto y acariciar los abismos, fríos, crueles, invisibles y despiadados.

Con el telón de fondo del estrecho universo femenino formado por mujeres acomodadas a su vida, que no pueden romper con una educación de otro tiempo, Pilar Quintana ha construido una novela intimista, con una voz narradora deslumbrante en su ingenuidad que, desde la memoria del hogar, conduce al lector por las obsesiones que pueblan la niñez de la que la protagonista se está despidiendo.

«Quintana hace maravillas con su prosa desilusionada, sobria, poderosa. - Juan Gabriel Vásquez

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 TRANSLATED LITERATURE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS

The jury highlighted that Los abismos / Abyss delves into the darkness of an adult world but through the eyes of a young girl who, from the memories of her family life, tries to understand the conflictive relationship between her parents. Against the backdrop of a feminine world, one in which women are tied to a never-ending wheel from which they cannot escape, the author has created a powerful story told from an evident ingenuousness and innocence that contrasts with the hopeless and doomed atmosphere that surrounds the protagonist. With a subtle and brilliant prose in which nature connects us with the symbolic possibilities of literature, and the abysses are both real and intimate.

With extraordinary perception and sensitivity, a young girl reflects on her parents troubled marriage and tries to construct her reality by predicting, guessing, or interpreting what is not said, and what is half said.

Claudia has what she considers a normal in Cali, a carefree childhood like so many others, because all happy families are alike. But since each family is unhappy in their own way, there comes a time when, suddenly, someone from the outside enters the equation, destroying all perceived harmony. And then it happens: life as they knew it becomes something else when the straight line that was supposed to have been followed, is broken.

With a background of the small female universe comprised of well-to-do women for whom it is impossible to break from the customs and mold of a previous time, Pilar Quintana has constructed an intimate novel, with a narrative voice dazzling in its naivety.

The author's most recent novel previous to this work, La perra / The Bitch, received the prestigious Colombian Biblioteca de Narrativa Award in 2018, was shortlisted for the National Book Award in Translated Literature 2020, and is being translated in fourteen countries. In addition, the audiovisual rights have been sold for film and video.