Lina Meruane

'Nervous System is fast, uncompromising and shimmering with intelligence' Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater'Meruane is one of the one or two greats in the new generation of Chilean writers who promise to have it all' Roberto BolañoA young woman struggles to finish her PhD on stars and galaxies. Instead, she obsessively tracks the experience of her own body, listening to its functions and rhythms, finally locating in its patterns the beginning of illness and instability. As she discovers the precarity of her self, she begins to turn her attention to the distant orbits of her family members, each moving away from the familial system and each so different in their experiences, but somehow made similar in their shared history of illness and trauma, both political and personal...

Following the US's bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the scenes of chaos at Kabul Airport, we could be forgiven for thinking we're experiencing an 'end of empire' moment, that the US is entering a new, less belligerent era in its foreign policy, and that its tenure as self-appointed 'global policeman' is coming to an end. Before we get our hopes up though, it's wise to remember exactly what this policeman has done, for the world, and ask whether it's likely to change its behaviour after any one setback. After 75 years of war, occupation, and political interference - installing dictators, undermining local political movements, torturing enemies, and assisting in the arrest of opposition leaders (from OEcalan to Mandela) - the US military-industrial complex doesn't seem to know how to stop. This anthology explores the human cost of these many interventions onto foreign soil, with stories by writers from that soil - covering everything from torture in Abu Ghraib, to coups and counterrevolutionary wars in Latin America, to all-out invasions in the Middle and Far East. Alongside testimonies from expert historians and ground-breaking journalists, these stories present a history that too many of us in the West simply pretend never happened. This new anthology re-examines this history with stories that explore the human cost of these interventions on foreign soil, by writers from that soil. From nuclear testing in the Pacific, to human testing of CIA torture tactics, from coups in Latin America, to all-out invasions in the Middle and Far East; the atrocities that follow are often dismissed in history books as inevitable in the 'fog of war'. By presenting them from indigenous, grassroots perspectives, accompanied by afterwords by the historians that consulted on them, this book attempts to bring some clarity back to that history.

Detta är en kraftfull och känslosam roman som utforskar en kvinnas inre värld när hon möter utmaningarna med plötslig blindhet. Med råa känslor och fängslande prosa utforskar den teman som sårbarhet, identitet och uthållighet i mötet med motgångar.

An electrifying novel about illness, displacement, and what holds us together, by the author of Seeing Red Ella is an astrophysicist struggling with her doctoral thesis in the "country of the present" but she is from the "country of the past," a place burdened in her memory by both personal and political tragedies. Her partner, El, is a forensic scientist who analyzes the bones of victims of state violence and is recovering from an explosion at a work site that almost killed him. Consumed by writer's block, Ella finds herself wishing that she would become ill, which would provide time for writing and perhaps an excuse for her lack of progress. Then she begins to experience mysterious symptoms that doctors find undiagnosable. As Ella's anxiety grows, the past begins to exert a strong gravitational pull, and other members of her family come into focus: the widowed Father, the Stepmother, the Twins, and the Firstborn. Each of them has their own experience of illness and violence, and eventually the systems that both hold them together and atomize them are exposed. Lina Meruane's Nervous System is an extraordinary clinical biography of a family, full of affection and resentment, dark humor and buried secrets, in which illness describes the traumas that can be visited not just upon the body, but on families and on the history of the countries--present and past--that we live in.

Lucina, a young Chilean writer, has moved to New York to pursue an academic career. While at a party one night, something that her doctors had long warned might happen finally occurs: her eyes haemorrhage. Within minutes, blood floods her vision, reducing her sight to sketched outlines and tones of grey, rendering her all but blind. As she begins to adjust to a very different life, those who love her begin to adjust to a very different woman - one who is angry, raw, funny, sinister, sexual and dizzyingly alive.

Mezcla de memorias y ficci n, Sangre en el ojo nos adentra en la mente de una escritora chilena que acaba de perder la vista en un pa s que no es el suyo. Esta es la historia de una ceguera de recuperaci n incierta vivida entre Nueva York y Santiago de Chile, pero tambi n la cr nica de una relaci n amorosa que pone en entredicho, ante esta situaci n l mite, la incondicionalidad del amor. Sangre en el ojo es la realizaci n triunfal de una maravillosa visi n art stica, una novela tan negra y amarga y sangrienta (y hermosa) como su met fora central. Es una novela dif cil de describir. Pero sabes que es grandiosa cuando la lees. The Nation Una novela de genio y de perturbadora inteligencia. Enrique Vila-Matas Nueva York y su ciudad natal, Santiago, son descritos en una prosa que combina las sensaciones y los recuerdos, la furia y el miedo. La historia revela sus verdades a trav s de la descripci n de lo inmediato: viscoso, repulsivo, y hermoso. The New Yorker Lina Meruane, cuya prosa se resiste a los usos heredados, es una escritora inteligente, autocr tica, que sabe adelantarse a objeciones ...]. Me quito el sombrero ante ella. Marta Sanz ENGLISH DESCRIPTION An Entropy Magazine "Best of 2016: Fiction Books" selection Included in World Literature Today's "75 Notable Translations of 2016" A Foreword Reviews Reviewers' Choice Selection for "14 Favorites of 2016" "A penetrating autobiographical novel, and for English-language readers this work serves as a stunning introduction to a remarkable author." -- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "This is not a fictionalized memoir of transformation and recovery, but a book that burns in your hands, something sharp and terrifying that bites back." -- Anna Zalokostas, Full Stop "A novel of genius and disturbing intelligence." -- Enrique Vila-Matas, author of The Illogic of Kassel This powerful, profound autobiographical novel describes a young Chilean writer recently relocated to New York for doctoral work who suffers a stroke, leaving her blind and increasingly dependent on those closest to her. Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, visceral, and caustic novel about the relation between the body, illness, science, and human relationships. Lina Meruane (b. 1970), considered the best woman author of Chile today, has won numerous prestigious international prizes, and lives in New York, where she teaches at NYU.

Lanzo al aire una moneda mental: si alguna invitacion me lleva a Europa yo me estirar hacia el Oriente por mis propios medios. La moneda gira sobre s misma mientras pienso en tantas restas. El regreso frustrado de mis abuelos. La negativa de mi padre. La integraci n que acab por aplanar la diferencia palestina en mi pa s. Una historia llena de agujeros. Tengo que sumarle a esa resta, pienso. Volverme Palestina. Volver. Echo al aire otra moneda y ahora suena a metal: en mi buzon aparece una carta de invitacion. --Volverse Palestina