Permafrost
Permafrost's no-bullshit lesbian narrator is an uninhibited lover and a wickedly funny observer of modern life. Desperate to get out of Barcelona, she goes to Brussels, 'because a city whose symbol is a little boy pissing was a city I knew I would like'; as an au pair in Scotland, she develops a hatred of the color green. And everywhere she goes, she tries to break out of the roles set for her by family and society, chasing escape wherever it can be found: love affairs, travel, thoughts of suicide.
Full of powerful, physical imagery, this prize-winning debut novel by acclaimed Catalan poet Eva Baltasar was a word-of-mouth hit in its own language. It is a breathtakingly forthright call for women's freedom to embrace both pleasure and solitude, and speaks boldly of the body, of sex, and of the self.
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Eva Baltasar has published ten volumes of poetry to widespread acclaim. Her debut novel, Permafrost, received the 2018 Premi Llibreter from Catalan booksellers and was shortlisted for France's 2020 Prix Médicis for Best Foreign Book. It is the first novel in a triptych which aims to explore the universes of three different women in the first person. The author lives a simple life with her wife and two daughters in a village near the mountains.
Julia Sanches translates from Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. For And Other Stories she has translated from all three languages--from the Portuguese, Now and at the Hour of Our Death by Susana Moreira Marques, from the Catalan the forthcoming Permafrost by Eva Baltasar, and from the Spanish, Slash and Burn by Claudia Hernández, for which she won a PEN/Heim award. She has also translated works by Noemi Jaffe, Daniel Galera, and Geovani Martins, among others. She is a founding member of the Cedilla & Co. translators' collective, and currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
"Permafrost crackles and sparks with observations about living, family, and desire that are wry, searing, funny, and full of love for the love of women. A potent shot to be swallowed whole."--Saskia Vogel
"Forthright, fearless and funny, with a no-messing narrator, this is a maximal reading experience."--Wendy Erskine
"Reading Eva Baltasar's Permafrost is like having a rug continuously pulled out from under you until finally the rug disappears. How can a novel that orbits suicide be so surprising, so intensely liberating and funny, and at the same time, so full of grief? That is its genius."--Amina Cain
"Permafrost is a discomfiting book about a sensual intoxication with life that just barely contains the desire for it to be over and done with forever. Like a perfect song, Eva Baltasar's words, as translated by Julia Sanches, have a sheen and inevitability that I won't soon forget. It held me in a trance."--Catherine Lacey
"An explosively witty, intense novel about freedom, desire and the body -- Baltasar's voice is as bracing and sharp as cold mountain air, and her queer exploration of being and intimacy is intoxicating. Raw, fresh and uncompromising new writing."--Rebecca Tamás
"Released from my annual dose of Bernhard, I usually feel a need for more and I usually do not have anything dark enough to hand. But this time I did - Permafrost by Eva Baltasar."--Imma Monsó
"A magma of sensations, doubts and aspirations. A trove of treasures. The piquancy of this novel, a surprise word-of-mouth hit in Spain, comes from the gap between the fantasies projected onto the narrator by the women around her--who see in her a free and contented woman--and the suffocating feeling constricting her. "--Le Monde
"Eva Baltasar debuts as a novelist with a high voltage book about the self, the body, sex and the family. One of the books of the year."--La Vanguardia
"The discovery of the year"--Time Out
"Breathtaking, intense, poetic."--ABC
"A cold but fiery lucidity, admirable, in its approach to detail."--El Mundo/El Cultural
"Baltasar handles feelings as radioactive material, that is, as something that kills and illuminates us."--Babelia/El País
"Baltasar describes how you didn't think it could be done. It surpasses everything. One of the best books of the year"--La Vanguardia
"Without doubt, one of the most memorable protagonists of contemporary Catalan narrative."--El Periódico
"Baltasar is very skilled. A Catalan Dorothy Parker. Ironic, implacable."--La Repubblica
"An investigation of the body as an instrument for measuring pain and desire. A besieged, solemn and majestically painful body, which ideally embraces all of humanity."--La Stampa
"A new voice. Courageous and audacious. Baltasar's style is astonishing."--El País
"Baltasar's is a strong debut."--Clarín
"Intimate, beautiful, ironic and surprising."--Nuvol.com
"An electrifying writing and a personal, raw and lucid gaze. It convinces."--Eva Piquer, Ara Llegim
"Read until you come or read until you cry. That's what happens when you encounter the frozen casing of Permafrost. Ice, not because it is cold, but because it cracks. "-Luna Miguel, Playground
"Eva Baltasar performs an exercise in honesty with this protagonist, who does not beat about the bush and talks - talks to us - without half measures, without filters, without conventions. Perhaps that honesty has been responsible for the success of the novel, which has recently won the Premi Llibreter. This is the power of a voice without scorn, without regrets, that narrates its own introspection."-Jenn Díaz, El Periódico
"Permafrost by Eva Baltasar is one of the revelatory books of this season . . . I had never read a book in Catalan about sex, seen from the perspective of a woman, such as Permafrost."-Julià Guillamon, Culturas
"I came to Permafrostbecause it was recommended by everyone. And now I have devoured it, I also recommend it to you."-Jordi Benavente, La lanza
"We talk about literature in capitals . . . This is a story that, in the search for reasons to end a life, allows us to find those reasons for which it is worth continuing to live, day by day, even if it is to be able to continue fantasizing about death, or even about life."-Marc Reig, A book a day
