The Book of Mistaken Journeys - by Clara Obligado (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

An Argentine exile living in Madrid travels to recover her lost childhood in Buenos Aires. A young man in Poland makes the voyage to the Americas, only to end up in the wrong hemisphere. A newly wed bride leaves her husband to embark on a European odyssey of her own. A mammoth cub ventures out for his first hunt, only to end up buried under the ice. In The Book of Mistaken Journeys, winner of the 2012 Premio Setenil for best short-story collection in Spain, Clara Obligado takes the reader on her own journey through time and space: from the prehistoric era to the 21st century, from Old World to New World and back again.

The characters in The Book of Mistaken Journeys embark on a journey in which chance guides their individual stories as they build toward an overarching trajectory. Along an unnerving narrative spiral, these eleven intertwined stories speak to exile, migration, and the search for an alternative future. Read alone, each story conveys an individual story of love, loss and longing. Read together, they intertwine and spiral into a greater narrative, revealing the unexpected ways in which humans relate to one another.

About the Author

Clara Obligado was born in Buenos Aires. A political exile, she has lived in Spain since 1976. She has been awarded the Femenino Lumen prize and the Juan March Cencillo short novel prize. Some of her short story collections are Las otras vidas, El libro de los viajes equivocados, La muerte juega a los dados, and La biblioteca de agua and among her essay collections are Una casa lejos de casa. La escritura extranjera and Todo lo que crece. Naturaleza y escritura.

Molly Wagschal is a recipient of the 2023 Sundial House Literary Translation Award. She translates from Spanish and Catalan into English and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies at Brown University.