Wishbone

Wishbone tells the story of Vica Luft, an artist’s assistant and single mother living in Edinburgh and of Tor Sima, the director of The International Museum of Colour in Oaxaca, Mexico. Vica and Tor have never met but their lives mirror and influence each other in unexpected ways. They have shared a lover and have both experienced a traumatic loss in their youth. Travelling backwards chronologically, we embark on a journey following them across seven cities over a period of twenty years to uncover what ties them and what sets them apart.

In this novel, her first since the acclaimed Umami and her first book written in English, Laia Jufresa turns the premise of the missing girl on its head and constructs a truly original and deeply thrilling narrative. Wishbone is a lively,  moving and imaginative story about women, art, octopuses, colour coding, love and longing that deftly explores the ways our lives are shaped by our circumstances, choices and friendships.

Praise for Wishbone:

"Everything is alive in Laia Jufresa's breathtaking Wishbone. People, objects, landscapes are equally imbued with a force that ripples across timelines and connects us deeply to this enchanted and disenchanted world, full of unforgettable characters. A tour de force of a novel from one of the most charming and original voices of my generation" 

– Valeria Luiselli, author of Beginning Middle End

"I admire the rare combination of literary experiment with great warmth for the world, characters, art, cities and landscapes. Wishbone is kaleidoscopic and friendly, elegantly brilliant on art and artists while deeply committed to love in all its messy, human forms. Laia Jufresa writes beautifully" 

– Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater

"Wishbone’s ambition and originality come not only from its structure and the way the story moves through time and space, but also from the nuanced, intelligent, and often humorous exploration of its characters, creating a poignant meditation on art and grief that had me gasping throughout"

– Daniel Saldaña Paris, author of The Dance and the Fire

‘In Wishbone, Laia Jufresa constructs a dazzling narrative architecture: a novel that moves backward in time while revealing, with relentless precision, the forces that sustain and fracture a life. Its structure invites the reader to unspool a secret rather than follow a plot. Laia Jufresa takes color to its furthest consequences, turning it into memory and wound—a powerful meditation on art, loss, and creation’.

– Fernanda Trías, author of Pink Slime

"Laia Jufresa does what writers are supposed to do: highlight the strangeness of a very old world. Wishbone is a beautiful book that grabs your eyes and holds on to them so that you can experience new ways of seeing the pleasures and misdeeds of our present"

– Yuri Herrera, author of Season of the Swamp

‘A page-turner about the unlikely ways art ties people to place and to one another. Spanning cities like Oaxaca, Paris, and Köln, Wishbone propels the reader backward in time, reuniting a family, reviving dead characters, unmaking closely kept secrets, and drilling into the source of an unmatched color palette that drenches each page in hues of “blood,” “bubblegum,” and “browngreengreyery.” 

– Sarah Minor, author of Carousel: An Essay on Seeing

"I never wanted to reach the last page of Wishbone. Enchanting and thought provoking, Laia Jufresa’s unforgettable novel presents vivid portrayals of complicated characters confronting artistic aspirations, emotional entanglements, and loss. The color-rich world that Jufresa presents spans decades and continents and is so exquisitely written and stylishly plotted that it absolutely seduced me. I cannot wait to read it again and to ponder its meanings with fellow readers. I doubt there could be a better novel published in English in 2026" 

– Lori Feathers, writer and bookseller, Interabang Books (Dallas)

"This novel is a magnificent octopus. With tentacles of exacting, luminous words, it links continents, nationalities, and deep bonds. Wishbone invents new colors made of joy and luck, so that even in the midst of irreparable loss and forced disappearance, the reader will be swimming in an ocean of alchemic beauty.” 

– Agustina Bazterrica, author of The Unworthy and Tender is the Flesh

‘This is it, the novel that proves there is no one writing like Jufresa today: with the insight to build a truly international, motley cast; the pluck and playfulness to plunge us into meandering, teasing structures; and the heart to shine a warm light over lives touched by all kinds of loss. The depth of this novel’s understanding will leave you as breathless as its revelations’. 

– Sophie Hughes, award-winning translator from Spanish and Italian

‘In Laia Jufresa’s magnificent new novel, intimacy is a sort of entanglement. As shown in this tale of at least two lives, but in truth so many more, intimacy manages to unite and divide—limbs and lives, time and space. These coil and unspool in Wishbone in both familiar and wonderfully new ways. It is, in short, a true work of art’.

– Brad Johnson, owner, East Bay Booksellers (Oakland)