Three men go out fishing in rural Argentina, returning to a favourite spot on the river despite their memories of a terrible accident there years earlier. Can another tragedy be avoided?
- Shortlisted
- The International Booker Prize 2024
- Published by Charco Press
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Selva Almada’s novel is the finest expression yet of her compelling style and singular vision of rural Argentina
Three men go out fishing, returning to a favourite spot on the river despite their memories of a terrible accident there years earlier. As a long, sultry day passes, they drink and cook and talk and dance, and try to overcome the ghosts of their past. But they are outsiders, and this intimate, peculiar moment also puts them at odds with the inhabitants of this watery universe, both human and otherwise. The forest presses close, and violence seems inevitable, but can another tragedy be avoided?
Selva Almada
Selva Almada is considered one of the most powerful voices of contemporary Argentinian and Latin American literature and one of the most influential feminist intellectuals of the region.
Annie McDermott
Annie McDermott is the translator of a dozen books from Spanish and Portuguese into English
More about Annie McDermott David Johnson reads an extract from Not a River
What the International Booker Prize 2024 judges said
‘Not A River moves like water, in currents of dream and overlaps of time which shape the stories and memories of its protagonists. Enero and El Negro have brought their young friend and protégé Tilo on a fishing trip along the Paraná River in Argentina. The island where they set up camp pulses with its own desires and angers, tensions equal to those of the men who have come together on its shores. Alongside the story of these grief-marred characters, the author offers those of the women of the town – and what luck to root for or mourn them: the mother whose ever-growing fires engulf us, her two flirtatious, youth-glowed daughters, and the almost-mythical manta ray who becomes one of the guardians and ghosts of this throbbing, feverish novel.’
The International Booker Prize 2024 Judges; William Kentridge, Natalie Diaz, Eleanor Wachtel, Romesh Gunesekera and Aaron Robertson.
Hugo Glendinning
What the critics said
‘The novel becomes more ethereal and ghostlike in the second half, and Almada particularly excels at depicting her characters’ fragility and vulnerability: “Ties here are made of cobwebs…. One little breeze and they break,” one character says. Like a dream, this otherworldly tale lingers in the reader’s mind.’
El periódico
‘This is a narrative of great depth in which the settings (the river, fishing, the island) emerge from a very powerful poetic narration that keeps quiet more than it says aloud, that omits more than it recounts, a dreamlike voice marked by an infinite and familiar wound anchored in a dialectic between dreams and an indestructible future.’
Chicago Review of Books
‘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.’
Morning Star
‘What makes the book compelling is how the author explores issues of domestic violence, state complicity, machismo and family negligence, along with class and social inequalities, in a non-sentimental prose which is all the more effective as result.’
The Big Issue
‘This is a powerful read…[Almada’s] effective use of fiction ensures a deep empathy in her readers which strict reportage sometimes fails to evoke.’
What the Booker Prize Book Club said
‘It evokes a time and a place with incredible precision, and also with metaphors that diffuse its atmospheres into your brain. You feel like you are there with the warring family members, with brothers and sisters living hard on this summer island, a respite from life and a life-changing story at the same time. You feel the hot summer air at the dance, hear the chatter and the banter in the background even as you listen in on conversations, on what’s going on all around. I felt like I could even hear the insects singing in the hot dusty leaves as I read this book. It is a tale of revenge and love that is so perfectly incised you won’t forget it.’
Gwilym Eades, The Booker Prize Book Club
‘I just finished this book! I read it in a single sitting and am still processing it! It was definitely a five star read for me; I completely agree with the description above that it was tense and atmospheric. I was fully engrossed in the book and love the way it was written!’
Andrea Mehta, The Booker Prize Book Club
The Booker Prize Book Club
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