A taut, lyrical portrait of four people thrown together on a single day in rural Argentina The Wind That Lays Waste begins in the great pause before a storm. Reverend Pearson is evangelizing across the Argentinian countryside with Leni, his teenage daughter, when their car breaks down. This act of God or fate leads them to the workshop and home of an aging mechanic called Gringo Brauer and a young boy named Tapioca.
As a long day passes, curiosity and intrigue transform into an unexpected intimacy between four people: one man who believes deeply in God, morality, and his own righteousness, and another whose life experiences have only entrenched his moral relativism and mild apathy; a quietly earnest and idealistic mechanic’s assistant, and a restless, skeptical preacher’s daughter. As tensions between these characters ebb and flow, beliefs are questioned and allegiances are tested, until finally the growing storm breaks over the plains.
Selva Almada’s exquisitely crafted debut, with its limpid and confident prose, is profound and poetic, a tactile experience of the mountain, the sun, the squat trees, the broken cars, the sweat-stained shirts, and the destroyed lives. The Wind That Lays Waste is a philosophical, beautiful, and powerfully distinctive novel that marks the arrival in English of an author whose talent and poise are undeniable.

The Wind That Lays Waste: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

ALMADA, SELVA

Literary

Graywolf Press

Product Description 
A piercing and passionate novel, set in rural Argentina, about violence and masculinityOscar Tamai and Elvio Miranda, the patriarchs of two families of brickmakers, have for years nursed a mutual hatred, but their teenage sons, Pájaro and Ángelito, somehow fell in love. Brickmakers begins as Pájaro and Marciano, Ángelito’s older brother, lie dying in the mud at the base of a Ferris wheel. Inhabiting a dreamlike state between life and death, they recall the events that forced them to pay the price of their fathers’ petty feud.The Tamai and Miranda f­amilies are caught, like the Capulets and the Montagues, in an almost mythic conflict, one that emerges from stubborn pride and intractable machismo. Like her heralded debut, The Wind That Lays Waste, Selva Almada’s fierce and tender second novel is an unforgettable portrayal of characters who initially seem to stand in opposition, but are ultimately revealed to be bound by their similarities.Almada enlarges the tradition of some of the most distinctive prose stylists of our time. In Brickmakers, she furthers her extraordinary exploration of masculinity and the realities of working-class rural life. This is another exquisitely written and powerfully told story by a major international voice. 
 Review 
“Such is Almada’s command of shape and pace, and the clean-edged vigour of the style McDermott voices with such skill, that we take Brickmakers on its own uncompromising terms – as pulp, tragedy and epic all at once.”―Boyd Tonkin, The Arts Desk (UK)“Almada's breathtaking multigenerational tragedy is a haunting, unforgettable examination of the lasting consequences of careless inhumanity.”―Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness, starred review“With its surprises and lyricism, this is a successful riff on a classic Shakespearean tale.”―Publishers Weekly“Almada is forceful in her depictions of sex, violence, and rage. I feel her prose in my body: a punch in the gut, the sharpness of glass. McDermott’s translation captures the bite of Almada’s sentences, which render both tenderness and violence with devastating clarity.”―Morgan Graham, Chicago Review of Books 
 About the Author 
Selva Almada is the author of The Wind That Lays Waste and Dead Girls. She is considered one of the most potent literary voices in Argentina and Latin America and one of the region’s most influential feminist intellectuals.Annie McDermott is a literary translator working from Spanish and Portuguese. Her translations include Dead Girls by Selva Almada, Empty Words and The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero, Loop by Brenda Lozano, and Wars of the Interior by Joseph Zárate.

Brickmakers: A Novel

Parenting & Relationships

* SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE * It's not a river, it's this river. A hot, motionless afternoon. Enero and El Negro are fishing with Tilo, their dead friend's teenage son. After hours of struggling with a hooked stingray, Enero aims his revolver into the water and shoots it. They hang the ray's enormous corpse from a tree at their campsite and let it go to rot, drawing the attention of some local islanders and igniting a long-simmering fury toward outsiders and their carelessness. It's only the two sisters--the teenage nieces of one of the locals, Aguirre--with their hair black as cowbird feathers and giving off the scent of green grass, who are curious about the trio and invite them to a dance. But the girls are not quite as they seem. As night approaches and tensions rise, Enero and El Negro return to the charged memories of their friend who years ago drowned in this same river. As uneasy and saturated as a prophetic dream, Not a River is another extraordinary novel by Selva Almada about masculinity, guilt, and irrepressible desire, written in a style that is spare and timeless.

Not a River: A Novel

The Wind That Lays Waste begins in the great pause before a storm. Reverend Pearson is evangelizing across the Argentinian countryside with Leni, his teenage daughter, when their car breaks down. This act of God or fate leads them to the workshop and home of an aging mechanic called Gringo Brauer and a young boy named Tapioca. As a long day passes, curiosity and intrigue transform into an unexpected intimacy between four people: one man who believes deeply in God, morality, and his own righteousness, and another whose life experiences have only entrenched his moral relativism and mild apathy; a quietly earnest and idealistic mechanic's assistant, and a restless, skeptical preacher's daughter. As tensions between these characters ebb and flow, beliefs are questioned and allegiances are tested, until finally the growing storm breaks over the plains. Selva Almada's exquisitely crafted debut, with its limpid and confident prose, is profound and poetic, a tactile experience of the mountain, the sun, the squat trees, the broken cars, the sweat-stained shirts, and the destroyed lives. The Wind That Lays Waste is a philosophical, beautiful, and powerfully distinctive novel that marks the arrival in English of an author whose talent and poise are undeniable.

United States

HighBridge Audio

In this brutal, gripping novel, Selva Almada narrates the case of three small-town teenage girls murdered in the 1980's in the interior of Argentina.Three deaths without culprits: 19-year old Andrea Danne, stabbed in her own bed; 15-year old María Luisa Quevedo, raped, strangled, and dumped in wasteland; and 20-year old Sarita Mundín, whose disfigured body was found on a river bank. Almada takes these and other tales of abused women to weave together a dry, straightforward portrait of gender violence that surpasses national borders and speaks to readers' consciousness all over the world.Following the success of The Wind That Lays Waste, internationally acclaimed Argentinian author Selva Almada dives into the heart of this problem with a reported novel, comparable to Truman Capote's _In Cold Blood _or John Hersey's Hiroshima, in response to the urgent need for attention to the ongoing catastrophe that is femicide.Not a police chronicle, not a thriller, but a contemporary noir novel that lives in the hearts of these women and the men who have abused them. Almada captures the invisible, and with lyrical brutality, blazes a new trail in journalistic fiction.

Dead Girls

Charco Press

The Wind That Lays Waste

Sengender Wind

Berenberg Verlag

Tres adolescentes de provincia asesinadas en los años ochenta, tres muertes impunes ocurridas cuando todavía, en nuestro país, desconocíamos el término femicidio. Tres asesinatos entre los cientos que no alcanzan para titulares de tapa ni convocan a las cámaras de los canales de Buenos Aires. Tres casos que llegan desordenados: los anuncia la radio, los conmemora un diario de pueblo, alguien los recuerda en una conversación. Tres crímenes ocurridos en el interior del país, mientras la Argentina festejaba el regreso de la democracia. Tres muertes sin culpables. Convertidos en obsesión con el paso de los años, estos casos dan lugar a una investigación atípica e infructuosa. La prosa nítida de Selva Almada plasma en negro lo invisible, y las formas cotidianas de la violencia contra nenas y mujeres pasan a integrar una misma trama intensa y vívida. Con este libro, la autora abre nuevos rumbos a la no ficción latinoamericana. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Three murders out of the hundreds that never reach the headlines or attract the video cameras from the Buenos Aires news stations. Three cases that arrive disorganized: the radio announces them, a smalltown newspaper commemorates them, someone remembers them during a conversation. Three crimes committed in the interior of the country, while Argentina is celebrating the return of democracy. Three deaths without culprits. Converted into more of an obsession with each passing year, these cases give rise to an unusual and fruitless investigation.

Chicas muertas (Spanish Edition)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Literatura Random House

Dispersos o inhallables, estos relatos dan nuevo acceso a la literatura de Selva Almada, conocida por crónicas y novelas varias veces traducidas, elogiadas por la crítica y celebradas por los lectores.Las siestas y los arroyos, los cardos y las máquinas, los caminos del litoral argentino. El calor. Compañeros, hermanos, abuelas, padres, amantes, amigos. Y, entre todos ellos, los códigos tácitos que revelan el carácter de los vínculos que los unen o los diálogos que los consienten y transforman, pero que sólo una autora de su talento permite que se escuchen cuando se los lee. En El desapego es una manera de querernos, Almada despliega toda la original potencia de su prosa."Selva Almada puede seguir hablando desde las esferas de la soledad de los territorios humanos, condenados desde su misma génesis; de la 'muerte' como una cosa 'vacía y oscura'; puede seguir hablándonos desde los márgenes, con esa violenta claridad de su lenguaje."Luis Guillermo Ibarra, La Jornada, México"Es literatura de provincia, como la de Carson McCullers, por ejemplo. Regional frente a las culturas globales, pero no costumbrista. Justo al revés de mucha literatura urbana, que es costumbrista sin ser regional."Beatriz Sarlo, Perfil, ArgentinaENGLISH DESCRIPTION"After Faullener, Rulfo, Carson McCullers, Selva Almada can keep speaking from the spheres of solitude; she can keep speaking to us rom the margins, with that violent clarity of her language." –La JornadaUnfocused or undiscoverable, these tales give new access to the literature of Selva Almada, known for chronicles and novels translated many times over, lauded by critics and celebrated by readers.Naps and streams, thistles and machines, the roads of the Argentinean coast. Heat. Companions, siblings, grandmothers, parents, lovers, friends. And among all of them, the tacit codes that reveal the character of the links that unite us or the dialogues that permit them and transform them, but that only an author of her talent allows them to be heard when they are read. In Detachment Is a Form of Loving Oneself, Almada reveals all of the original power of her prose.

El desapego es una forma de quererse / Detachment Is a Form of Loving Oneself (Spanish Edition)

Short Stories & Anthologies

Ladrilleros

Self-Help

Relationships

Lumen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by ALMADA, SELVA. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by ALMADA, SELVA

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by ALMADA, SELVA. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Wind That Lays Waste: A Novel

Brickmakers: A Novel

Not a River: A Novel

The Wind That Lays Waste: A Novel

Dead Girls

The Wind That Lays Waste

Sengender Wind

Chicas muertas (Spanish Edition)

El desapego es una forma de quererse / Detachment Is a Form of Loving Oneself (Spanish Edition)

Ladrilleros