Our book club welcomes people from all round the world for a discussion about a work of fiction which has recently been translated into English. We meet on Zoom once each month during Trinity's term time. Admission is free, and participants may join as and when it suits. This month, we will be discussing:

Not a River

by Selva Almada, translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott.

[from the book's cover]:

Three men go out fishing, returning to a favourite spot on the river despite their memories of a terrible accident there years earlier. As a long, sultry day passes, they drink and cook and talk and dance, and try to overcome the ghosts of their past. But they are outsiders, and this intimate, peculiar moment also puts them at odds with the inhabitants of this watery universe, both human and otherwise. The forest presses close, and violence seems inevitable, but can another tragedy be avoided? Rippling across time like the river that runs through it, Selva Almada’s latest novel is the finest expression yet of her compelling style and singular vision of rural Argentina.

Compared to Carson McCullers, William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, Selva Almada (Entre Ríos, Argentina, 1973) is considered one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Latin American literature and one of the most influential feminist intellectuals in the region. She has published several novels, a book of short stories, a book of journalistic fiction and a film diary (written on the set of Lucrecia Martel’s film Zama ). She has been finalist for the Medifé Prize, the Vargas Llosa Prize for Novels, the Rodolfo Walsh Award and of Tigre Juan Award. Her debut in English was The Wind that Lays Waste (Winner of the EIBF First Book Award 2019), followed by Dead Girls (2020), Brickmakers (2021), and Not a River (winner of the IILA Prize in Italy and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024).

Annie McDermott is the translator of a dozen books from Spanish and Portuguese, by such writers as Mario Levrero, Ariana Harwicz, Brenda Lozano, Fernanda Trías and Lídia Jorge. She was awarded the Premio Valle-Inclán for her translation of Wars of the Interior by Joseph Zárate, and her translation of Brickmakers by Selva Almada was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. In 2024 her translation of Selva Almada's novel Not a River was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. She has previously lived in Mexico City and São Paulo, and is now based in Hastings in the UK.

If you enjoy events about literary translation, take a look at what else we have planned at the Centre, here.