Author(s): Fernanda Trias ; Annie McDermott (Translator)

Novel | Translated fiction | Uruguay | Charco Press

In a rundown apartment building, in an unnamed city in Uruguay, a father and daughter close themselves off from the world. 'The world is this house', says Clara, and the rooftop becomes their last recess of freedom. A pet canary is their only witness.

As Clara's connection to the outside is stripped away--the neighbor who stops coming by, the lover whose existence is only known by a pregnancy--desperation and paranoia take hold. It's a stifling embrace, and we are there with her, our narrator, dreading what we know the future holds.

'The world is this house’, says Clara while she is trying to protect her beloved ones from the world – yes, that one outside their house walls – which seems to threaten them more and more. Clara entrenches herself with her father and her daughter Flor in a dark apartment that inevitably crumbles on them. The roof becomes their last recess of freedom. A caged bird is the only witness of Clara’s fear and resistance against those she thinks are trying to destroy her.

Are threats and pain external or inside our own bodies? Where is violence’s root? What are we afraid of? Is there a possibility to find a roof to finally being able to breathe? What are our umbilical cords?’. Fernanda Trías does not answer these questions – impossible for anyone – about instinct, civilization and taboos, instead she gives them shape and dives deep into them a with a grotesque and forceful history written with agility and a Kafkaesque sense of humour. The Rooftop is a claustrophobic novel about freedom, and also about fear, violence, motherhood and loss.

Reviews:
"Trias deftly turns her brief fiction into universal parable." -Shelf Awareness
"An exceptional novel." -ABC Cultural
"Like a constrictor slowly suffocating its prey, Trias already has you well within her grasp long before you even know what's happening." -Jeremy Garber, Powell's Bookshop
"A chilling tour-de-force by one of the most exciting and subversive voices writing today in Latin America." -Morning Star
"A short and powerful read, it demands to be re-read and scrutinised." -Lunate
"what is most striking about the book is the intensity of the claustrophobia and paranoia" -The Publishing Post
"Many read Rooftop like a disturbing love story between a father and his daughter, but this novel is much more than that. It is the genesis of the themes that will be at the centre of everything that Trias would move on to write: fear, violence, loss and freedom." -WMagazin
"Masterfully written, with a simplicity and honesty that reminds us of the prose of Flannery O'Connor." -Revista de Letras

Praise for Fernanda Trias
'Fernanda Trias appears from the antipodes of the sterile literature currently in vogue, to show us she is one of the most interesting authors writing in Spanish today.'-Mario Levrero, author of Empty Words

Author Biography:
Considered to be one of the authors forming part of the 'new Latin American Boom' of women writers, Fernanda Trias (Uruguay, 1976) is without doubt one of the most prominent literary voices in today's River Plate region and in all of Latin America. Her books have been published in Spain as well as in Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, and also in France. However, none of her books have appeared in English until now.
Annie McDermott's published and forthcoming translations include Mario Levrero's Empty Words and The Luminous Novel (And Other Stories and Coffee House Press), Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz (co-translation with Carolina Orloff, Charco Press) and City of Ulysses by Teolinda Gersao (co-translation with Jethro Soutar, Dalkey Archive Press). Her translations, reviews and essays have appeared in Granta, The White Review, World Literature Today, Asymptote, the Times Literary Supplement and LitHub, among others. Annie also edits books for Charco Press, including Julian Fuks' Resistance and Giuseppe Caputo's An Orphan World. Her translation of Almada's third novel, Brickmakers, will come out with Charco Press and Graywolf in 2021.