Four women from La Plata, Argentina, are forced to suffer through a
series of ordeals thanks to their impoverished, dysfunctional family--in
this darkly comic literary masterpiece from Aurora Venturini, never
before translated into English
At the age of eighty-five, Aurora Venturini stunned Argentine readers
when her darkly funny and formally daring novel, Cousins (Las
primas), won *Página/12'*s New Novel Award. She had already written
more than forty books, but it was only then, in 2007, that she was
widely recognized as a paradigm-shifting voice in Spanish-language
literature.
Venturini never stopped writing in her ninety-two years, and produced an
oeuvre that is mischievous and stylish, vital and mysterious, and
completely original. She lived a life immersed in the literature and
culture of the twentieth century: her first award was given to her in
person by Jorge Luis Borges; she was friends and colleagues with Eva
Perón; and when she lived in exile in Paris, she socialized with a
sparkling milieu of writers and philosophers, including Simone de
Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Cousins, widely regarded as Venturini's masterpiece, is the story of
four women from an impoverished, dysfunctional family in La Plata,
Argentina, who are forced to suffer through a series of ordeals,
including illegal abortions, miscarriages, sexual abuse, disfigurement,
and murder, narrated by a daughter whose success as a painter offers her
a chance to achieve economic independence and help her family as best as
she can.
Neighborhood mythologies, family, female sexuality, vengeance, and
social mobility through art are explored and scrutinized in the
unmistakable voice of Yuna--who stares wildly at the world in which she
is compelled to live--a voice unique in contemporary literature whose
unconventional style can be candid, brutal, sharp, and utterly
breathtaking. With the translation of Cousins into several languages
for the first time, Aurora Venturini is now being discovered
internationally and championed as a major voice in Latin American
literature.
