Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
A writer of Uruguayan origins, Carolina De Robertis is the author of the novels The President and the Frog; Cantoras, winner of a Stonewall Book Award and a Reading Women Award, a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and a Lambda Literary Award, and a New York Times Editors' Choice; The Gods of Tango, winner of a Stonewall Book Award; Perla; and the international bestseller The Invisible Mountain, which received Italy's Rhegium Julii Prize. Her books have been translated into seventeen languages and have received numerous other honors, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
De Robertis is also an award-winning translator of Latin American and Spanish literature, and editor of the anthology Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times. In 2017, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts named De Robertis on its 100 List of "people, organizations, and movements that are shaping the future of culture." She teaches at San Francisco State University, and lives in Oakland, California, with her wife and two children.
Carolina De Robertis's website
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Did you purposefully set out to retell the history of Uruguay through the eyes of women?
In a way. I knew, when I began, that I wanted to write a narrative inspired by the family stories I had heard while growing up, from my parents’, grandparents’, and great-grandparents’ generations. It quickly became clear that the history of Uruguay itself was also central to the project and that women would form the heart of the book. In my family’s oral tradition, the male ancestors tended to come with long, elaborate stories, while the women were often summed up in a brief sentence or two. Where did they come from? What did they see in their world, and breathe back into it? What treasures lie buried in their silence? One of the marvelous things about fiction is its ability to excavate, explore, or reinvent such treasures, when the original truths have been lost.
The novel spans the lives of three different women over 90 years. Was it challenging to develop a project of such a broad scope?
Let’s put it this way: it was an adventure, and like many true adventures, it involved setting out without a map, a compass, or an inkling of how long or arduous the road would be. If I had known what would be required, how many years...
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