Ceniza en la boca
(Book)

Novel.

Diego jumps from a fifth floor and since then that image has not stopped drilling his sister's head: six seconds and a body crashing to the ground. It is she who looks back and tells the story of the two brothers. Her arrival in the world in a home where life was never fair. The years they spent in Mexico with their grandparents, while her mother was looking for a life in Spain, and it was she, still a child, who took care of Diego. The stage in Madrid, a city that they did not understand and that did not understand them either. The first separation, when she went to Barcelona to make her way and her brother stayed in the place she hated the most. And I returned her, carrying Diego's ashes, to a Mexico very different from the one she remembered. This novel narrates the emotional journey of a young woman who intuits the reasons for her brother's suicide and is the protagonist of her own Ulysses syndrome, in which neither going nor coming back is really destiny. A story of separations and abandonments, of loss and initiation into life, in which Brenda Navarro bravely tackles elusive questions such as inequality, xenophobia or rootlessness, and which confirms her as one of the most powerful and daring narrators of our literature. Written with heart and soul, Ceniza en la boca is a book that burns and raises the painful question of what life is worth living.

Diego salta desde un quinto piso y desde entonces esa imagen no deja de taladrarle la cabeza a su hermana: seis segundos y un cuerpo estrell̀ndose contra el suelo. Es ella quien echa la vista atr̀s y cuenta la historia de los dos hermanos. Su llegada al mundo en un hogar en el que la vida nunca fue justa. Los ąos que pasaron en M̌xico con sus abuelos, mientras su madre se buscaba la vida en Espąa, y era ella, a︢n nįa, quien se hac̕a cargo de Diego. La etapa en Madrid, una ciudad que no entend̕an y que tampoco los entend̕a a ellos. La primera separaci̤n, cuando ella se march̤ a Barcelona a abrirse camino y su hermano se qued̤ en el lugar que m̀s odiaba. Y su regreso, cargando las cenizas de Diego, a un M̌xico muy distinto al que recordaba. Esta novela narra el viaje emocional de una joven que intuye las razones del suicidio de su hermano y protagoniza su propio s̕ndrome de Ulises, en el que ni la ida ni la vuelta son realmente destino. Una historia de separaciones y abandonos, de p̌rdida e iniciaci̤n a la vida, en la que Brenda Navarro aborda con enorme valent̕a cuestiones esquivas como la desigualdad, la xenofobia o el desarraigo, y que la confirma como una de las narradoras m̀s potentes y audaces de nuestra literatura. Escrito con el alma y las entrąas, Ceniza en la boca es un libro que quema y plantea la dolorosa pregunta de qǔ vida merece la pena ser vivida.

Text in Spanish.