When an albatross strays too far from its home, or loses its bearings, it becomes an 'accidental', an unmoored wanderer. The protagonists of these eight stories each find the ordinary courses of their lives disrupted by an unexpected event and are pushed into unfamiliar terrain: a girl encounters her uncle in hospital, who was cast out of the family for reasons unknown; a menacing force hovers over a fracturing family on a rural holiday; a couple and their children inhabit a stifling world where it is better to be asleep than awake; a man's desire for a solution to his marital dissatisfaction has unforeseen consequences. Deft and disquieting, oscillating between the real and the fantastical, The Accidentals is the brilliant new book from International Booker-shortlisted duo Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey.

About the Author

Guadalupe Nettel was born in Mexico and grew up between Mexico and France. She is the author of the international award winning novels El huesped [The Guest] (2006), The Body Where I Was Born (2011), After the Winter (2014, Herralde Novel Prize) and Still Born (2020) and four collections of short stories, all published by Anagrama, the most prestigious of all Spanish-language publishing houses. Her work has been translated into more than fifteen languages and has appeared in publications such as Granta, The White Review, El Pais, the New York Times, La Repubblica and La Stampa. She currently lives in Mexico City where she's the director of the magazine Revista de la Universidad de Mexico.

Reviews

'Nettel is one of the leading lights in contemporary Latin American literature.... I envy how naturally she makes use of language; her resistance to ornamentation and artifice; and the almost stoic fortitude with which she dispenses her profound and penetrating knowledge of human nature.'
- Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive

'I love the work of Guadalupe Nettel, one of Mexico's greatest living writers. Her fiction is brilliant and original, always suffused with sensuality and strange science.'
- Paul Theroux, author of The Mosquito Coast

'Nettel is free. She has succeeded in creating an audacious narrative style all her own, a singular and fearless way of being in the world. An essential voice of the new Latin American literature.'
- Enrique Vila-Matas, author of Mac's Problem

Book Information
ISBN 9781804271476
Author Guadalupe Nettel
Format Paperback
Page Count 128
Imprint Fitzcarraldo Editions
Publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions