Los nombres de Feliza

On January 8, 1982, the Colombian sculptor Feliza Bursztyn died in a Paris restaurant. She was forty-eight years old. At the time of her sudden death, she was accompanied by her husband and four friends. One of them, the writer Gabriel García Márquez, published an article days later that included three seemingly simple words, yet mysterious at their core: "She died of sadness." Juan Gabriel Vásquez uses these words as a starting point to investigate the secret or unknown life of an extraordinary woman. Feliza Bursztyn always challenged the society in which she lived. The daughter of a Jewish couple who had emigrated to Colombia, a revolutionary artist in a time of political upheaval, a free-spirited woman in a world that distrusted women's freedom, she led a life that reflected the great tensions of the 20th century and, above all, the desire to be her own master.