Here Be Icebergs - by Katya Adaui (Paperback)

About the Book

"The mysteries of kinship (families born into and families made) take disconcerting and familiar shapes in these refreshingly frank short stories. A family is haunted by a beast that splatters fruit against its walls every night, another undergoes a near-collision with a bus on the way home from the beach. Mothers are cold, fathers are absent--we know these moments in the abstract, but Adaui makes each as uncanny as our own lives: close but not yet understood."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

The weird, fetid, familiar discomfort of family is front and centre in these short stories of all the ways we remain a mystery to each other.

The mysteries of kinship (families born into and families made) take disconcerting and familiar shapes in these refreshingly frank short stories. A family is haunted by a beast that splatters fruit against its walls every night, another undergoes a near-collision with a bus on the way home from the beach. Mothers are cold, fathers are absent--we know these moments in the abstract, but Adaui makes each as uncanny as our own lives: close but not yet understood.

Review Quotes

"haunting....Adaui's poetic prose elevates the poignancy of these mostly somber stories" --Publishers Weekly

"A kaleidoscopic collection that takes a sharp, dark look at family and how we survive it." --Kirkus

"A softly beguiling book that pulls the reader into its complexity and investigation of deeply vicious themes." --The Arts Desk

"Brief, incendiary tales, flaring into being." --Irish Times

"With this book Katya Adaui consolidates her position as one of the most subtle and original Peruvian writers in recent years." --El País

"Adaui belongs to a resurgence of women storytellers who have restored the pleasure of reading stories that leave us suffering from their sweet intoxication." --WMagazín

About the Author

Katya Adaui was born in Lima in 1977. She is the author of the books of short stories Geografía de la oscuridad (Geography of Obscurity), Aquí hay icebergs (Here Be Icebergs), Algo se nos ha escapado (Something Escaped Us) and the novel Nunca sabré lo que entiendo (I'll Never Know What I Understand). She has also written the children's books Patichueca and Muy Muy en Bora Bora . She holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero in Argentina. She lives in Buenos Aires where she teaches writing workshops.

Rosalind Harvey was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018. Her translation of Juan Pablo Villalobos' debut novel, Down the Rabbit Hole, was shortlisted for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award and the 2012 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Her latest translation of his work, I'll Sell You A Dog, was longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award. She has translated books by Guadalupe Nettel, Elvira Navarro, Enrique Vila-Matas and Héctor Abad Faciolince and is currently working on a YA title about the journeys of teenage Central American immigrants to the United States. Rosalind is also chair and co-founder of the Emerging Translators Network and is a Teaching Fellow in Spanish and Translation Studies at the University of Warwick.