Scar - Paperback

by Sara Mesa (Author), Adriana Nodal-Tarafa (Translator)

Sonia meets Knut in an online literary forum and begins a unique long-distance relationship with him that becomes obsessive and derailed by excess. While her feelings toward him shift between attraction and repulsion, she can't help but be fascinated by his unusual and perfectionist personality. He's an intelligent young man of her same age who lives outside of all social norm and courts her through sumptuous stolen gifts, which include any book she could ever dream of. Her need to create distance when Knut becomes too absorbing, but also her unending curiosity, and a yearning to live experiences beyond a predictable existence, lead Sonia to begin a secret double life in which she will be trapped for several years without a chance to wipe the slate clean.

In this unprecedented story, Sara Mesa's concise and electrifying style not only exposes the dynamics of a disquieting, imbalanced romantic relationship, it gives shape to an elegant, non-prescriptive reflection on consumer society and theft; power and submission; desire, guilt, and sexuality; fantasy as an alternative to intimacy; the vulnerability of childhood; and the formation of a budding writer. With Scar, Sara Mesa consolidates herself as one of the most original literary voices of her generation. Published in 2015 in Spain and Latin America, Scar has been highly praised by literary critics and will be translated into Italian and Dutch. It won the 2015 Ojo Critico award, from Spain's National Public Radio, for Spanish fiction authors under forty.

Author Biography

Sara Mesa is the author of eight works of fiction, including Scar (winner of the Ojo Critico Prize), Four by Four (a finalist for the Herralde Prize), An Invisible Fire (winner of the Premio Málaga de Novela), Among the Hedges, and Bad Handwriting. Her works have been translated into more than ten different languages, and she has been widely praised for her concise, sharp writing style.

Adriana Nodal-Tarafa lived in Mexico City and Miami during childhood and adolescence. She currently resides in Seattle. An ongoing career in technical translation and a passion for art have led her to pursue creative translation work in entertainment software, film, and literature. She is a graduate of University of Houston-Virginia and Dalkey Archive Press' Applied Literary Translation program, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology with specialization certificates in Museum studies and Software localization from the University of Washington.