Coming in Spring 2024 - Literary fiction to discover and thrill

SELKIES HOUSE is thrilled to announce that its first literary translation, FROM SAVAGERY, by Venezuelan debut author Alejandra Banca and translated from the Spanish by Katie Brown, is the winner of a PEN Translates Award, announced today.

“Some books sleep, others live, others still create life” Jan Queretz, Casapaís

Hustle, dodge, pedal, breathe; love, bury, don't look back. In this fast-paced collection of stories, a lost generation of young refugees accelerates into the light with breath-taking rhythm and shimmering authenticity. These are the Savages.

In the heat of Barcelona beats the pulse of a new young underclass. Once the bright future of Venezuela, it disappeared after the country's surreal collapse. From savagery they emerge and take flight: a cohort of friends thrumming with life, there before the world but under its radar. Escaping hunger and worse in Caracas, they pedal the streets as fast-food delivery

cyclists, prostitutes, and dealers, scratching their living at speed. Through the streets of a new city whose punishing hills and dark alleys they navigate at risk, they are visible in fleeting moments on a doorstep, a corner, or weaving through rush-hour traffic.

Savages to the local population, they become hypnotic fireflies here, discovering identity, surviving insult, questioning gender, finding love, trying to forget, or is it to remember, but alive and supporting each other through stories of fear, horror, laughter, and hope.

María Eugenia pedals eighty-four frenetic hours a week, her body broken and bleeding, rapid orders pushing through to her phone that rings nonstop. She has kept in touch with Cheo who looks forward to the arrival of his girlfriend from Venezuela, but he has yet to tell her he is married to Andrés. Nataly has turned to prostitution only to fall in love with Sasha, her mysterious Russian client. Meanwhile El Loco tries to establish his reputation as a drug dealer in Madrid on the back of a clouded past in Caracas where FROM SAVAGERY opens in a funeral home, at the very moment Angélica realises she can't afford her mother's burial.

This generation comes alive through its language; as distinct as the friendship shared, it is crackling, proud, and without apology, a gust of fresh air bringing with it the spirit of a new life.

Alejandra Banca studied literature at Andrés Bello University in Caracas. Fleeing Venezuela’s collapse, she emigrated to Spain and lives in Barcelona where she worked in several hospitality and cold sales jobs before establishing herself as an English teacher. Her poetry has appeared in various anthologies. SELKIES HOUSE will publish her first novel in 2025.

Katie Brown is a senior lecturer in Modern Languages at Exeter University. An expert on contemporary Latin American culture, she has appeared on BBC Radio 4's "Open Book" and is part of the women's UK, US, and Venezuela translation collective, Colaboratorio Ávila. Her translations appear regularly in the quarterly journal, Latin American Literature Today.

US rights: sold by Selkies House to Restless Books | Translation rights: contact Orianna Camejo at Lecturas de Arraigo in Madrid: lecturasdearraigo@gmail.com

UK Publication: 20 June 2024 | HB Price: £20 | ISBN: 978-1-7385220-4-0

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