The Naked Woman
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Born in 1941, Armonía Somers was a Uruguayan feminist, pedagogue, novelist, and short story writer. Though considered to be part of the literary generation of 1945 in Uruguay, her style and use of a pseudonym set her apart. She passed away in May 1994. The Naked Woman is her first novel translated into English.
Kit Maude is a Spanish-to-English translator based in Buenos Aires. His translations of stories by Latin American authors have been featured in Granta, The Literary Review, and The Short Story Project, among other publications. He writes reviews for Ñ, Otra Parte, and the Times Literary Supplement.
Elena Chavez Goycochea is a PhD candidate in Latin-American, Iberian and Latino Cultures at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research interests include Latin-American and Caribbean women's writing, contemporary Afro-Brazilian literature, and literatures from transitional periods. She teaches at the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at City College of New York.
Shortlisted for the National Translation Award
A wild, brutal paean to freedom. . . . Somers' feminism is profound, and complicated. --NPR.org
"This short yet undeniably powerful take on the viciousness of the male ego exposes the soft underbelly of 'civil society, ' showing that just beneath the surface is man's base animal nature. Somers's novel is a surreal, gripping experience." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A lusciously brutal resurrected classic." --Kirkus Reviews
[This] slim novel packs a major wallop. --Brooklyn Rail
"If you love weird stories about powerful women throwing off clothes and conventions, you'll want to pick this book up right away." --Paperback Paris
"Its language explodes and sparkles and it is continuously open to astonishing images. . . . The Naked Woman works both as a visionary linguistic experience, and an allegory of the female body's dark powers." --Full Stop
"A radical, feminist gem." --Three Percent
"I am so grateful that a new generation will be able to read this surreal, nightmarish book about women's struggle for autonomy--and how that struggle is (always, inevitably) met with violence." --Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
"The extraordinary power of The Naked Woman lies in the mysterious sensation of a metaphor whose meaning is being suspended. Like all literary greats, Somers offers no answers, she just amplifies the questions." --Andrés Barba, author of Such Small Hands
"A fiery, imaginative meditation on the reach of embodied consciousness, The Naked Woman is a timely translation of a Latin American hidden jewel. Wild and brilliant, Somers speaks to us in the here and now of our troubled present. --Cristina Rivera Garza, author of The Taiga Syndrome
"Too strange and scandalous for her time, Armonía Somers is a feminist legend." --Lina Meruane, author of Seeing Red
"Armonía Somers is an extraordinary writer whose erotic fairy-tale world is akin to that of Angela Carter. Thanks to Kit Maude's perceptive rendering, the English-speaking reader can now discover one of the most original, and unfairly neglected, Latin American authors of the past century." --Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading
"This short but savage novel is essential reading. Hallucinatory, surreal, and beautifully brutal. Like a dream-vision that gets under your skin." --Julianne Pachico, author of The Lucky Ones
