In a rundown apartment building, in an unnamed city in Uruguay, a father and daughter close themselves off from the world.

"The world is this house," says Clara, and the rooftop becomes their last recess of freedom. A pet canary is their only witness.

As Clara's connection to the outside is stripped away-the neighbor who stops coming by, the lover whose existence is only known by a pregnancy-desperation and paranoia take hold. It's a stifling embrace, and we are there with her, our narrator, dreading what we know the future holds.

About the Author

Considered to be one of the authors forming part of the 'new Latin American Boom' of women writers, Fernanda Trias (Uruguay, 1976) is without doubt one of the most prominent literary voices in today's River Plate region and in all of Latin America. Her books have been published in Spain as well as in Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, and also in France. However, none of her books have have appeared in English until now.

Annie McDermott 's translations include Mario Levrero's Empty Words and The Luminous Novel (And Other Stories and Coffee House Press), Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz (co-translation with Carolina Orloff, Charco Press) and City of Ulysses by Teolinda Gersao (co-translation with Jethro Soutar, Dalkey Archive Press). Her translations, reviews and essays have appeared in Granta , The White Review , World Literature Today , Asymptote , the Times Literary Supplement and LitHub , among others. She has translated several books by Selva Almada, including: Dead Girls (2020) and Brickmakers (2021). In 2023, she was awarded the Valle Inclan Prize for her translation of Joseph Zarate's Wars of the Interior.

Reviews

"Trias deftly turns her brief fiction into universal parable." -Shelf Awareness

"An exceptional novel." -ABC Cultural

"Like a constrictor slowly suffocating its prey, Trias already has you well within her grasp long before you even know what's happening." -Jeremy Garber, Powell's Bookshop

"A chilling tour-de-force by one of the most exciting and subversive voices writing today in Latin America." -Morning Star

"A short and powerful read, it demands to be re-read and scrutinised." -Lunate

"what is most striking about the book is the intensity of the claustrophobia and paranoia" -The Publishing Post

"Many read Rooftop like a disturbing love story between a father and his daughter, but this novel is much more than that. It is the genesis of the themes that will be at the centre of everything that Trias would move on to write: fear, violence, loss and freedom." -WMagazin

"Masterfully written, with a simplicity and honesty that reminds us of the prose of Flannery O'Connor." -Revista de Letras

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Praise for Fernanda Trias
'Fernanda Trias appears from the antipodes of the sterile literature currently in vogue, to show us she is one of the most interesting authors writing in Spanish today.'-Mario Levrero , author of Empty Words

Book Information
ISBN 9781913867041
Author Fernanda Trias
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Charco Press
Publisher Charco Press