Instituto Cervantes in collaboration with the publisher Akoya, presents the English translation of Marta Sanz's work Clavícula, translated by Katie King as My Clavicle and other massive misalignments.
The presentation will consist of a conversation between the author and Miranda France, cultural journalist for the TLS newspaper.
Synopsis: During a flight, Marta Sanz experiences pain in a place that has never hurt before. A dark ache or a stitch. From that moment on, the comical discomfort that triggers Clavícula grows: 'I'm going to tell you what happened to me and what didn't happen to me. The possibility that nothing has happened to me is what terrifies me the most." Here, the narration of the autobiographical episode fractures like the body itself, which is deformed, recomposed or resurrected to the rhythm set by the violence of reality.
The decomposition of the body seems inseparable from the decomposition of a type of organic novel where truths are lied about and trapdoors and other sleight of hand are used.
In Clavícula –or Mi clavícula y otros inmensos desajustes– no: here, words seek to recount events, more or less blurred, in order to understand. The difficulty of naming pain gives rise to grotesque reflections: does it hurt first and then I go mad? Does it hurt because I've gone mad? Does pain come from within or from without? Do they blow me up first, then I go mad and then it hurts? Or does it hurt and then I become aware that they're blowing me up? In line with these, a string of themes are addressed: the line that separates the body from its scientific accounts and its imagination; intolerance of psychological imbalance and imbalance as an increasingly common symptom; anxiety as a pathology of advanced capitalism and, in contrast to the big headlines, the specific situation of a public health centre; the psychosomatic; hypochondria and illnesses that may not be so imaginary; specifically female illnesses and pain; overexploitation and the fear of poverty that punishes women above all; money and family finances, the exact figure that exacerbates persistent bone discomfort.
Marta Sanz has a PhD in Philology. Anagrama has published her novels
Black, black, black, Un buen detective no se casa jamás (A Good Detective Never Marries),
Daniela Astor y la caja negra (Daniela Astor and the Black Box) (Tigre Juan Prize, Cálamo Prize and Estado Crítico Prize), as well as her essay
Monstruas y centauras (Monsters and Centaurs). Her most recent work is
Los íntimos (The Intimate Ones).
My Clavicle And Other Massive Misalignments marks her debut in English-language
translation.
Miranda France's writing spans fiction, non-fiction and reportage; she also translates from Spanish. Her first book was commissioned after winning The Spectator's Shiva Naipaul Travel Writing Prize, having spent three years working as a journalist in South America.
