A revelatory, pioneering masterpiece about the life, rape, and
abortion of a 16-year-old Argentine farmworker--now in English for the
very first time
With echoes of Edith Wharton's Summer, this radical feminist novel
broke the silence around abortion to reshape the way women's bodies and
rights were perceived in 20th-century Argentina
Perfect for readers of Tove Ditlevsen, Annie Ernaux's Happening, and
Claudia Piñeiro's Elana Knows
In the sweltering Argentine pampas, all things bow to Nefer. Reeds nod
when she digs her heels into her horse, unripe peaches snap and fall as
she gallops past. Sickly-sweet air bends, churns in Nefer's throat.
Nefer measures the distance between her body and the table, and feels
something filling her up, turning against her. Her belly swells.
Desperate, Nefer visits a local medicine woman who is known to perform
abortions but Nefer becomes too afraid to explain why she is truly
there.
She attends confession at church but cannot confide in the priest.
During a fierce argument with her mother, she finally blurts out her
secret.
A radical feminist text, January was the first Argentine novel to
represent rape from the survivor's perspective and to explore the
life-threatening risks pregnancy posed, in a society where abortion was
both outlawed and taboo.
With a narcotic musicality and voice scorched through with honesty,
Gallardo hangs before us an experience that has been lived and ignored a
thousand times over. Nefer closes her eyes. We careen to her and we see.
