STILL BORN
A profound novel about motherhood, friendship, and the power of community from “one of the leading lights in contemporary Latin American literature” —Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive
Alina and Laura are independent and career-driven women in their mid-thirties, neither of whom have built their future around the prospect of a family. Laura is so determined not to become a mother that she has taken the drastic decision to have her tubes tied. But when she announces this to her friend, she learns that Alina has made the opposite decision and is preparing to have a child of her own.
A profound novel about motherhood, friendship, and the power of community from “one of the leading lights in contemporary Latin American literature” —Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive
Alina and Laura are independent and career-driven women in their mid-thirties, neither of whom have built their future around the prospect of a family. Laura is so determined not to become a mother that she has taken the drastic decision to have her tubes tied. But when she announces this to her friend, she learns that Alina has made the opposite decision and is preparing to have a child of her own.
Alina’s pregnancy shakes the women’s lives, first creating distance and then a remarkable closeness between them. When Alina’s daughter survives childbirth – after a diagnosis that predicted the opposite – and Laura becomes attached to her neighbor’s son, both women are forced to reckon with the complexity of their emotions, their needs, and the needs of the people who are dependent upon them.
In prose that is as gripping as it is insightful, Guadalupe Nettel explores maternal ambivalence with a surgeon’s touch, carefully dissecting the contradictions that make up the lived experiences of women.
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Paperback
- April 2025
- 224 Pages
- 9781639735389
Buy the Book
$17.99
About Guadalupe Nettel & Rosalind Harvey (Translator)
Guadalupe Nettel is the author of four international-award-winning novels: El huésped, The Body Where I was Born, After the Winter, and Still Born; and three collections of short stories. She currently lives in Mexico City where she’s the director of the magazine Revista de la Universidad de México.
Rosalind Harvey is a literary translator and educator. Her work has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, amongst others. She lives in the UK.
Praise
“Haunting . . . A heart-racingly intense journey.” —New York Times Book Review
“With a twisty, enveloping plot, the novel poses some of the knottiest questions about freedom, disability, and dependence—all in language so blunt it burns.” —International Booker Prize Judges
“Blurs the lines between . . . mother and not-mother . . . You don’t have to be a mother—in fact, maybe you shouldn’t be. But you have to do something for whomever you find in, or near, your nest.” —The New Yorker
“Subtle and thought provoking . . . a complicated portrait of the different, nuanced forms caregiving can take.” —The Atlantic
“It’s immediately apparent why Valeria Luiselli calls Nettel ‘one of the leading lights in contemporary Latin American literature.’ I can’t wait to read the rest of her works in translation.” —Lit Hub