La merma

In her stubborn struggle to recover from a stroke that paralyzed her right side from head to toe, María Moreno observes what happens to her own body and the bodies of those around her in the ICU, the rooms of a clinic besieged by COVID, and the ward where physical therapists torture her with the motor command: walk! From the paid sex available to the bedridden, to the "disabled" influencers on TikTok, to the advantages and disadvantages of amputating a limb to replace it with a carbon-fiber prosthesis, to the stylistic shift resulting from the practical feat of writing with her left hand, which mutilates the baroque style that was her trademark… With a biting ferocity and a devilish, novel tenderness toward herself, this pivotal author pushes the course of all Spanish-language literature of recent decades. Against the abyss of herself, the abyss of a language. Faced with the emptiness of a new existence, the act of looking at herself reflects the extreme vulnerability of the species. And his persistent desire to live.