The Delivery
Published on 24. October 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
169 pages
978-1-913867-69-0 (ISBN)
Description
From the acclaimed author ofFish Soup, a wickedly self-aware novel of family, memory, and possibility just this side of the uncanny.
A tolerable, ordinary life: an adequate, if boring, freelance job; reliably irritating video calls with your sister; half-hearted plans for the future (a writing residency, a child); and, in the middle of your half-furnished apartment, an enormous crate. Unopened, delivered days ago, and getting in the way.
InThe Delivery , what's inside is your estranged mother, and her arrival brings to a head the tentative motions you've made to examine the past and the subtle fissures in the life you've built. Semi-ordinary happenings take on an otherworldly cast when you look at them sideways, but nothing is stranger, in this place far from home, than the tenuous bonds of family that hold us together, or don't.
A tolerable, ordinary life: an adequate, if boring, freelance job; reliably irritating video calls with your sister; half-hearted plans for the future (a writing residency, a child); and, in the middle of your half-furnished apartment, an enormous crate. Unopened, delivered days ago, and getting in the way.
InThe Delivery , what's inside is your estranged mother, and her arrival brings to a head the tentative motions you've made to examine the past and the subtle fissures in the life you've built. Semi-ordinary happenings take on an otherworldly cast when you look at them sideways, but nothing is stranger, in this place far from home, than the tenuous bonds of family that hold us together, or don't.
Reviews / Votes
"This multi-centred novel contains everything: death, life and all the stuff in between." -The Guardian"A sharp and perceptive novel." -Irish Times
"The microscopic precision with which Garcia Robayo delves into the human soul is striking." -El Pais
"An unsettling novel about uncertainty, memories and fears, solitude, family relationships and hopes for the future." -Diario Popular
"Robayo masterfully constructs a story of family ghosts and memories that put into question what it means to leave behind a country, family and friends for a new place." -Morning Star
"Once again, a Colombian literary star has blended absurdism, realism and great linguistic skill to create a novel that may be neatly packaged but proves to contain multitudes." -Lunate
"Completely engrossing. Garcia Robayo's best yet. " -Sounds & Colours
"Inside the music of Robayo's prose, one encounters an argument about the vigor of personal history, its relentless capacity to emboss the present." -The Believer
"By throwing her characters off their typical paths, Garcia Robayo continues to show readers that she is one of the brightest voices in Latin American literature." -On the Seawall
"The Delivery reveals the fissures, gaps, and spaces of incomprehension that can exist between speakers of the same language." -Full Stop
"This chamber piece, which chronicles the narrator's various procrastinations, succeeds thanks to its voice, its pacing, and its glaring omissions." -Necessary Fiction
"Questions about motherhood, belonging, and exile hang over this quietly unsettling work." -Southwest Review
"Garcia Robayo has written a novel that, avoiding any complacency, situates us in the interstices of identity." -El Mundo
"If for this narrator having a child is like 'resisting extinction' (...), novels like The Delivery fulfil a similar injunction to permanence: not to pass through the world without leaving anything behind." -El Pais
"An intimate, mature work that confirms Margarita Garcia Robayo as one of the most promising Latin American writers today." -La Razon
"The Colombian writer makes the daily routine of her protagonist seem like a disturbing sequence of events." -Expansion
"A brilliant and exhaustive relationship with language that draws on a search for origins." -El Tiempo
"Thoughts that achieve a sparking lucidity that contrasts with the bewilderment experienced by the main character." -La Nacion
"You can't put it down until you find out what happens at the end." -Pagina/12
"The Delivery is one of those novels that mark a before and an after, just as happens to its main character when she manages to open the crate sent by her sister." -Pagina/12
"A book of contained intensity, full of glimpses more than certainties, which confirms the author as one of the leading voices of Latin American fiction." -El Siglo de Torreon
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Praise for Margarita Garcia Robayo
Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana Prize (Finalist)
"Garcia Robayo writes with caustic insight, brittle humour and a fair whack of cynicism (...) Holiday Heart is brilliant." -The Guardian
"Understated, lyrical, and delivers its insights by means of acute observation. (5 stars)" -The Arts Desk
"Cunningly well achieved." -Irish Times
"Holiday Heart is a poignant and searing story of love ending." -Gutter Magazine
"Coombe's translation brilliantly captures the bite in Garcia Robayo's humour." -iNews
"One of Colombia's greatest living writers." -The Monthly Booking
"Brilliantly dramatises the disjunction between an idealized picture of life like sitting on a sunny beach and the reality of that life like getting sand caught in your teeth." -Lonesome Reader
Best Fiction Books of 2017 -New York Times (Espanol)
"Darkly funny throughout, this examination of two lives will stay with you long after you read the final words and lay the book down." -Lunate
"Every sentence in the book seems to be written with a scalpel infused with acid. " -Morning Star
"Acute, provocative, concise and raw." -Translating Women
"An incredibly insightful portrayal of a disintegrating marriage...provides a sharp-eyed view of estrangement and personal identity." -Book Riot
"Frightening, alluring, and inescapable." -Books and Bao
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Casa de las Americas Prize (Winner)
Society of Authors Valle-Inclan Prize (Shortlist)
"Garcia Robayo's prose bristles with restrained energy and a wry humour which captures the disaffection of her characters." -The Times Literary Supplement
"A remarkable genre-bending effort." -The Guardian
"[Fish Soup] is a gorgeous, blackly humorous look into the lives of Colombians struggling to find their place in society, both at home and abroad." -Publishers Weekly, starred review
"An evocative collection that conveys the potency of desire in even the most ordinary lives." -Kirkus
"The tackiness of the Caribbean coast and its discontents are marvellously rendered." -The Times Literary Supplement
"If you're a fan of Ottessa Moshfegh or Melissa Broder, then this is for you." -The Guardian
"Garcia Robayo is building one of the most solid and interesting oeuvres in Latin American literature."" -Juan Cardenas , author of ORNAMENTAL
"Her stories combine the atmosphere of Desperate Housewives, Hemingway's iceberg theory and a memorable, bittersweet ending."" -Jorge Carrion , author of BOOKSHOPS
"Margarita shows sharp insight into contemporary life. Her voice speaks with surreptitious irony and sophisticated psychological perception. She is the creator of an exceptional poetics of displacement."" -Juan Villoro , author of THE WITNESS
"There are very few writers who can challenge expectations the way Margarita Garcia Robayo does. Margarita is simply one of the best of the new generation that respects, yet no longer identifies with, the Latin American Boom."" -Mariana Enriquez , author of THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE
"This is a text written from within the belly of the beast. (...) One of the most essential books of the year." -Asymptote
"Garcia Robayo's prose is concise and startling, her voice versatile and capable of packing a serious punch." -LA Review of Books
"Subversive, funny, and biting." -Electric Literature
"Full of everyday details that reveal the most vulnerable aspects of feminine subjectivity." -La Nacion
"One of the most potent figures of contemporary Latin American literature." -ABC Cultural
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More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Not illustrated
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 126 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
224 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-913867-69-0 (9781913867690)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
Margarita Garcia Robayo was born in 1980 in Cartagena, Colombia, and now lives in Buenos Aires where she teaches creative writing and works as a journalist and scriptwriter. She is the author of several novels, including Hasta que pase un huracan (Waiting for a Hurricane ) and Educacion Sexual (Sexual Education , both included in Fish Soup ), Holiday Heart, and Lo que no aprendi (The Things I Have Not Learnt). She is also the author of a book of autobiographical essays Primera Persona (First Person ) and several collections of short stories, including Worse Things , which obtained the prestigious Casa de las Americas Prize in 2014 (also included in Fish Soup ). The Delivery is her third book to appear in English after the very successful Fish Soup (selected by the TLS as one of the best fiction titles of 2018) and Holiday Heart (Winner of the English PEN Award).
Megan McDowell is a literary translator focusing on contemporary Latin American authors. Her translations include works by Alejandro Zambra, Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enriquez, Lina Meruane, and Diego Zuniga. Her short story translations have appeared in The New Yorker , The Paris Review , Tin House , McSweeney's , Granta , and the Virginia Quarterly Review , among others. Her translation of Alejandro Zambra's Ways of Going Home won an English PEN Translates award (2013), and her English version of Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. She has been awarded residencies by the Banff International Translation Centre (Canada), Looren Translation House (Switzerland) and Art Omi (USA). She currently lives in Santiago, Chile.
Megan McDowell is a literary translator focusing on contemporary Latin American authors. Her translations include works by Alejandro Zambra, Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enriquez, Lina Meruane, and Diego Zuniga. Her short story translations have appeared in The New Yorker , The Paris Review , Tin House , McSweeney's , Granta , and the Virginia Quarterly Review , among others. Her translation of Alejandro Zambra's Ways of Going Home won an English PEN Translates award (2013), and her English version of Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. She has been awarded residencies by the Banff International Translation Centre (Canada), Looren Translation House (Switzerland) and Art Omi (USA). She currently lives in Santiago, Chile.