Wolfskin

Lara Moreno, translated by Katie Whittemore

Sofía is thirty-five and her husband has left her. Her father died the year before, and her mother is living in the Canary Islands with a new partner. Sofía flees the city with her young son, seeking refuge in her father’s house on the southern coast of Spain, where she spent summers as a girl. Her younger sister, with whom she has a close but uneasy relationship, joins her. Living together again, the sisters face their present as well as their childhood and tangled past.

Wolfskin is an intimate meditation on ambivalence and motherhood, eroticism and disappointment, family violence and failure, and ultimately, the possibility—or impossibility—of living with those you love.

‘Wolfskin is a sensitive and thoughtful portrait of mother- and sisterhood that shows how the past defines our understanding of both. Katie Whittemore’s translation deals admirably with Moreno’s range of textures and moods. Through Rita and Sofia, Moreno suggests that, fraught though they may be, family relationships are never entirely beyond redemption.’ – Patrick Graney, The Times Literary Supplement

‘That violence and abuse can happen, be evident, and yet be ignored is Moreno’s searing observation’. – Declan O’Driscoll, The Irish Times

‘I legit can’t stop thinking about it. Stinging prose.’ – Zeba Talkhani, author of My Past is a Foreign Country

Lara Moreno was born in 1978 in Seville and raised in Huelva. She lives in Madrid, where she works as an editor and teaches writing. She has published the collections of short fiction Casi todas las tijeras (Quórum, 2004) and Cuatro Veces Fuego (Tropo, 2008), as well as several books of poetry, which have been collected, along with new and unpublished poems, in the recently-published Tempestad en víspera de viernes (Lumen, 2020). She was awarded the FNAC New Talent Award upon the publication of her first novel, Por si se va la luz (Lumen, 2013), which was followed in 2016 by Piel de lobo/Wolfskin (Lumen). She is currently writing her third novel, entitled La ciudad, to be published by Lumen. 

Katie Whittemore translates from the Spanish. Her work has appeared in Two Lines, The Arkansas International, The Common Online, Gulf Coast Magazine Online, The Brooklyn Rail, and InTranslation. Current projects include novels by Spanish authors Sara Mesa, Javier Serena, and Aliocha Coll and Aroa Moreno Durán. She lives in Valencia.

Paperback £8.99
Ebook £5.99

Author Lara Moreno
Translator Katie Whittemore
Original language Spanish
Publication date 24 January 2022
ISBN 9780995632028
Ebook ISBN 9780995632035
Format B-format paperback | ebook
Page count 272