The Remainder La Resta Alia Trabucco Zeran Sophie Hughes Translation by Alia Trabucco Zeran, Sophie Hughes (translation) 9781911508328, 1911508326, B07F3PV5DK instant download after payment.

Intense, intelligent & extraordinarily sensitive to the shape & weight of words, Alia Trabucco Zerán’s remarkable debut presents a new way to count the cost of generational trauma. Translated by Sophie Hughes.

Santiago, Chile. The city is covered in ash. Felipe, Iquela & Paloma, three children of ex-militants, are facing a past they can neither remember nor forget. Felipe sees dead bodies on park benches, counting them up in an obsessive quest to square the figures with the official death toll. He is searching for the perfect zero, a life with no remainder. When the body of Paloma’s mother gets lost in transit, the three take a hearse & a handful of pills on a road trip with a difference.

"Trabucco Zerán is one of several chillingly talented writers who are heirs to... late-20th-century Chilean trauma... The Remainder is a book about what to do with inherited trauma — what good it might serve the next generation in terms of learning from previous atrocious horrors, & what paralysis it might trigger in terms of living in a world that’s materially different from the past & the muddled territory in between...The Remainder is driven by immersion in visceral gratification as its characters flee the burdens of their lives. And while there is pleasure in this sort of running, there is fear in it, too."  -  Nathan Scott McNamara, Los Angeles Review Of Books

Alia Trabucco Zeran is a Chilean writer. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for her MFA in Creative Writing at New York University and has a PhD in Spanish & Latin American Studies from University College London. Her debut novel La Resta (The Remainder) was critically acclaimed. 

Sophie Hughes has also translated José Revueltas & Enrique Vila-Matas for New Directions. She was shortlisted for the 2019 & 2020 International Booker Prize.