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A coming-of-age story, based on a recent shocking chapter of Argentine history, about a young woman who makes a devastating discovery about her origins with the help of an enigmatic houseguest.
Perla Correa grew up a privileged only child in Buenos Aires, with a cold, polished mother and a straitlaced naval officer father, whose profession she learned early on not to disclose in a country still reeling from the abuses perpetrated by the deposed military dictatorship. Perla understands that her parents were on the wrong side of the conflict, but her love for her papá is unconditional. But when Perla is startled by an uninvited visitor, she begins a journey that will force her to confront the unease she has suppressed all her life, and to make a wrenching decision about who she is, and who she will become.
"Starred Review. De Robertis's lyrical flights are grounded in the fulfillment of the most desperate wishes of disappeared parents and their children, culminating in a wrenching catharsis about rebirth and healing." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Lyrically combining into reality both the fantastic and the horrific, De Robertis weaves a beautiful and plain-faced tale about birth, rebirth, and the responsibility of inheritance from complex, startling history." - Booklist
"Starred Review. A translator, short fiction writer, and novelist... De Robertis skillfully weaves a lyrical voice around her characters that treats victims, perpetrators, and bystanders with the same care and honesty." - Library Journal
"An elegantly written and affecting meditation on life in the wake of atrocity." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about Perla was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
A writer of Uruguayan origins, Caro De Robertis is the author of six novels, including The Palace of Eros, Cantoras, and more. Their books have been translated into seventeen languages and have receive numerous honors, including two Stonewall Book Awards and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, which they were the first openly nonbinary writer to receive. De Robertis is also an award-winning literary translator and a professor at San Francisco State University. They live in Oakland, California with their two children.
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