’The Wonders is a poet's novel, delicate but strong, impressing its images firmly on the imagination’ HILARY MANTEL, two-time winner of the Booker Prize
’Full of brilliant moments of illumination… a boldly ingenious structure and flashes of beauty’ GUARDIAN
‘Mesmerising. Medel’s prose is hypnotic – it’s hard to believe this is her first novel.’ AVNI DOSHI, author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted Burnt Sugar
‘A serene and impious novel that puts class, feminism and the eternal complexity of family ties at the fore’ MARIANA ENRÍQUEZ, author of the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
AN AUDACIOUS, HEARTBREAKING DEBUT ABOUT WORKING-CLASS WOMEN’S LIVES ACROSS TWO GENERATIONS, HERALDING A NEW EUROPEAN LITERARY STAR
María and her granddaughter Alicia have never met. Decades apart, both make the same journey to Madrid in search of work and independence. María, scraping together a living as a cleaner and carer, sending money back home for the daughter she hardly knows; Alicia, raised in prosperity until her family was brought low by tragedy, now trapped in a poorly paid job and a cycle of banal infidelities. Their lives are marked by precarity, and by the haunting sense of how things might have been different.
Through a series of arresting vignettes, Elena Medel weaves together a broken family’s story, stretching from the last years of Franco’s dictatorship to mass feminist protests in contemporary Madrid. Audacious, intimate and shot through with razor edged lyricism, The Wonders is a revelatory novel about the many ways that lives are shaped by class, history and feminism; about what has changed for working-class women, and what has remained stubbornly the same.
PRAISE FOR THE WONDERS
‘An ambitious and enlightening book from an acclaimed Spanish poet’ The Irish Times
‘A beautifully written novel that examines the lives of three generations of working-class women living precariously in Madrid’ Stylist
At just over 200 pages, The Wonders is a novel that doesn’t waste a single word, instead basking in all the linguistic pleasures of great poetry’ Sunday Business Post
‘Very rarely do natural talent, linguistic discipline, and emotional rawness coincide… unfolds a history of crude intimacies, subtle roughness and luminous sadness’ Andrés Neuman, author of Traveller of the Century
‘One of Spain’s best poets has become one of its most important novelists’ El País
Genre: Literary Fiction
’Full of brilliant moments of illumination… a boldly ingenious structure and flashes of beauty’ GUARDIAN
‘Mesmerising. Medel’s prose is hypnotic – it’s hard to believe this is her first novel.’ AVNI DOSHI, author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted Burnt Sugar
‘A serene and impious novel that puts class, feminism and the eternal complexity of family ties at the fore’ MARIANA ENRÍQUEZ, author of the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
AN AUDACIOUS, HEARTBREAKING DEBUT ABOUT WORKING-CLASS WOMEN’S LIVES ACROSS TWO GENERATIONS, HERALDING A NEW EUROPEAN LITERARY STAR
María and her granddaughter Alicia have never met. Decades apart, both make the same journey to Madrid in search of work and independence. María, scraping together a living as a cleaner and carer, sending money back home for the daughter she hardly knows; Alicia, raised in prosperity until her family was brought low by tragedy, now trapped in a poorly paid job and a cycle of banal infidelities. Their lives are marked by precarity, and by the haunting sense of how things might have been different.
Through a series of arresting vignettes, Elena Medel weaves together a broken family’s story, stretching from the last years of Franco’s dictatorship to mass feminist protests in contemporary Madrid. Audacious, intimate and shot through with razor edged lyricism, The Wonders is a revelatory novel about the many ways that lives are shaped by class, history and feminism; about what has changed for working-class women, and what has remained stubbornly the same.
PRAISE FOR THE WONDERS
‘An ambitious and enlightening book from an acclaimed Spanish poet’ The Irish Times
‘A beautifully written novel that examines the lives of three generations of working-class women living precariously in Madrid’ Stylist
At just over 200 pages, The Wonders is a novel that doesn’t waste a single word, instead basking in all the linguistic pleasures of great poetry’ Sunday Business Post
‘Very rarely do natural talent, linguistic discipline, and emotional rawness coincide… unfolds a history of crude intimacies, subtle roughness and luminous sadness’ Andrés Neuman, author of Traveller of the Century
‘One of Spain’s best poets has become one of its most important novelists’ El País
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Dreamlike yet precise, internal yet expansive, The Wonders moves between generations of women with a clear-eyed empathy for their struggles to be free. Medel's characters are hungry, angry, imperfect, and completely alive." - Adrienne Celt
"A mesmerizing read. Medel's prose is hypnotic--it's hard to believe this is her first novel. I was completely engrossed in this story, in the shadow each generation casts on the one that comes after it, in the tension between caring for oneself and caring for others." - Avni Doshi
"Completely unsentimental and with a harshness that hides the most radiant and painful of scars, Elena Medel's The Wonders brings to life several generations of working women: it's a serene and impious novel that puts class, feminism, and the eternal complexity of family ties at the fore." - Mariana Enríquez
"I read The Wonders in one page-turning night . . . This book achieves a rare combination of novelistic plotting and virtuosic interiority that left me rooting for Maria and Alicia as if I'd known them all my life." - Anna Solomon
"A mesmerizing read. Medel's prose is hypnotic--it's hard to believe this is her first novel. I was completely engrossed in this story, in the shadow each generation casts on the one that comes after it, in the tension between caring for oneself and caring for others." - Avni Doshi
"Completely unsentimental and with a harshness that hides the most radiant and painful of scars, Elena Medel's The Wonders brings to life several generations of working women: it's a serene and impious novel that puts class, feminism, and the eternal complexity of family ties at the fore." - Mariana Enríquez
"I read The Wonders in one page-turning night . . . This book achieves a rare combination of novelistic plotting and virtuosic interiority that left me rooting for Maria and Alicia as if I'd known them all my life." - Anna Solomon
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