EATING ASHES BY BRENDA NAVARRO

Cervantes Institute of London and Manchester, in collaboration with the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, present the tour introducing the English translation of the book Cenizas en la boca – Eating Ashes by author Brenda Navarro.

Brenda will take part in talks in Manchester, Cambridge, and London, where she will discuss the writing process of her book, its themes, and her career as a writer.

The London event will be chaired by journalist Silvia Quin Rothlisberger.

After the talk, copies of the book will be available for purchase.

Synopsis of Cenizas en la boca

Diego jumps from a fifth-floor window, and since then, that image keeps drilling into his sister’s mind: six seconds and a body crashing to the ground. She is the one who looks back and tells the story of the two siblings. Their arrival into a world where life was never fair. The years they spent in Mexico with their grandparents while their mother tried to make a living in Spain, and she, still a child, was the one who took care of Diego. The stage in Madrid, a city they didn’t understand and that didn’t understand them either. The first separation, when she left for Barcelona to make her way and her brother stayed behind in the place he hated most. And her return, carrying Diego’s ashes, to a Mexico very different from the one she remembered.

This novel narrates the emotional journey of a young woman who senses the reasons behind her teenage brother’s suicide and experiences her own “Ulysses syndrome,” where neither departure nor return is truly a destination. A story of separations and abandonments, of longing and rage, of loss and initiation into life, in which Brenda Navarro tackles elusive issues such as inequality, xenophobia, and uprooting with enormous courage, confirming her as one of the most powerful and daring voices in contemporary literature. Intense, visceral, and devastating, Cenizas en la boca is a book that burns and poses the painful question of what life is worth living.

BRENDA NAVARRO is one of the most critically acclaimed authors writing in Spanish. Her first novel, Casas vacías (Empty Houses), won the Tigre Juan Prize. Cenizas en la boca received the Cálamo and CEGAL awards, as well as the Madrid Booksellers’ Prize, and was a finalist for the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Novel Prize. Brenda is a screenwriter and a regular contributor to El País and other media outlets. Originally from Mexico City, she lives in Madrid.

MEGAN McDOWELL has translated many of today’s most important Latin American writers. Her work has received the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the English PEN Award, the Valle-Inclán Prize, and two O. Henry Awards, and she has been nominated for the International Booker Prize four times. Her short story translations have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and others. She lives in Chile.

Silvia Quin Rothlisberger, Colombian journalist, writer and broadcaster based in London. Her work has appeared in Wasafiri Magazine, The White Review, Songlines Magazine, The Guardian, among others. As a journalist Silvia has been telling the stories of the Latin American community in London for the past 14 years in print, radio and documentary. Her short stories have been published in anthologies for emerging writers by El Ojo de la Cultura and Comma Press. She currently works for the Guardian.

Event in English.