Las otras

With the sharpness, critical imagination and fine, evocative writing that have earned her international recognition such as the Prix Femina étranger, Alia Trabucco Zerán offers in Las otras a radical view ‘of the present and its thorns’. The book consists of fifteen essays, woven together with great intelligence, in which the author draws on her concerns, readings, experiences and memories to examine the contemporary world in an attempt to understand new scenarios and, at the same time, to think about other horizons.

The dilemmas of feminism, queer issues, the Palestinian catastrophe, the body and Islam, the circulation of images in the virtual world, neo-fascism and the recovery of ancestral memory provoke reflections in Trabucco Zerán that are both moving and thought-provoking. ‘Do we really see with words?’ she asks, referring to the power of language to name or erase. ‘And what should we do with writers whose stance makes us radically uncomfortable?’ she asks in another brilliant text on new forms of censorship.

A book that confirms the talent of a writer who is essential in the current literary landscape.