Eating Ashes by Brenda Navarro in Cambridge

Instituto Cervantes London, together with the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, presents the English translation of the book Cenizas en la boca – Eating Ashes by author Brenda Navarro.

The event will feature a conversation between Brenda Navarro and writer Carlos Fonseca.

After the talk, copies of the book will be available for purchase.

Synopsis of Cenizas en la boca.

Diego jumps from a fifth-floor window, and since then, that image keeps drilling into his sister’s mind: six seconds and a body crashing to the ground. She is the one who looks back and tells the story of the two siblings. Their arrival into a world where life was never fair. The years they spent in Mexico with their grandparents while their mother tried to make a living in Spain, and she, still a child, was the one who took care of Diego. The stage in Madrid, a city they didn’t understand and that didn’t understand them either. The first separation, when she left for Barcelona to make her way and her brother stayed behind in the place he hated most. And her return, carrying Diego’s ashes, to a Mexico very different from the one she remembered. This novel narrates the emotional journey of a young woman who senses the reasons behind her teenage brother’s suicide and experiences her own “Ulysses syndrome,” where neither departure nor return is truly a destination. A story of separations and abandonments, of longing and rage, of loss and initiation into life, in which Brenda Navarro tackles elusive issues such as inequality, xenophobia, and uprooting with enormous courage, confirming her as one of the most powerful and daring voices in contemporary literature. Intense, visceral, and devastating, Cenizas en la boca is a book that burns and poses the painful question of what life is worth living.

Brenda Navarro is one of the most critically acclaimed authors writing in Spanish. Her first novel, Casas vacías (Empty Houses), won the Tigre Juan Prize. Cenizas en la boca received the Cálamo and CEGAL awards, as well as the Madrid Booksellers’ Prize, and was a finalist for the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Novel Prize. Brenda is a screenwriter and a regular contributor to El País and other media outlets. Originally from Mexico City, she lives in Madrid.

Carlos Fonseca is a writer and academic. His teaching, writing, and research focus on modern Latin American literature, art, and culture, with particular emphasis on concepts of history, nature, and politics. He is interested in the intersection between philosophy, literature, and art history. He holds a PhD from Princeton University. He is the author of three novels: Coronel Lágrimas, Museo animal, and Austral, all published in Spanish by Anagrama and in English by Restless Books and Farrar, Straus and Giroux.