Scar
Published on 27. February 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
200 pages
978-1-62897-573-4 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for Scar:"A taut and disturbing tale of inspiration which poses questions about the darker material we draw on for art." -Kirkus Reviews
"Scar is an original story, written with a concise, direct, fast, transparent style and almost with the asepsis of a surgeon." -RTVE (Spain)
"A good, modern novel of two young people learning reciprocally about adult life . . . Sara Mesa confirms our good expectations." -El Mundo
Praise for Sara Mesa:
"With short, propulsive chapters, Sara Mesa creates an unforgettable gothic landscape, centered on the mysterious and menacing Wybrany College, that twists in ways that unsettle and thrill. In Four by Four, Mesa's sentences are clear as glass, but when you look through you will be terrified by what you see." -Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel
"The atmospheric unraveling of the mystery will keep you turning the page; the ending will leave you stunned-Mesa's Four by Four is a tautly written literary thriller that juxtaposes the innocence of children with the fetish of control; a social parable that warns against the silence of oppression and isolation through its disquieting, sparse prose." -Kelsey Westenberg, Seminary Co-op
"Very few authors evoke a visceral reaction with prose in the way that Sara Mesa does. A master of tension building, Mesa constructs lurid phantasmagoric worlds that are equal parts mysterious and unnerving. Four by Four sounds an alarm on the dangers of power, privilege, and the self-delusions told in order to hide complicity. A work of high gothic art, Four by Four solidifies Mesa as one of the strongest female voices in contemporary Spanish literature." -Cristina Rodriguez
"Stylistically, Four by Four's narrative structure is both dazzling and dizzying, as its perfect pacing only enhances the metastasizing dread and dis-ease. . . . Mesa exposes the thin veneer of venerability to be hiding something menacing and unforgivable-and Four by Four lays it bare for all the world to see." -Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books
"Sara Mesa. Don't forget that name. The finalist for the 30th Premio Herralde de Novela. Read it. Share it. Talk about it. Open the book and begin. You won't be able to put it down." -Uxue, Un libro al dia
"Sara Mesa has brought a new narrative voice to the scene that is in a position to bear important fruit for the genre of the Spanish novel in the twenty-first century. Already in Four by Four an author has been discovered with the capacity for artistic integration of different stylistic registers within the same novel and with a real talent for representing reality. Four by Four is an account of the sinister relationships of power corrupted by fear and latent violence that feed this social parable of Kafkian roots." -Angel Basanta, El Mundo
"What can I say about a story in which everything works? . . . A new author that will surprise us further in future." -Sergio Sancor, Libros y literatura
"Scar picks at the wound, compellingly exploring how much obsessions with identity, consumerism, and fantasy cost in terms of true intimacy."-Necessary Fiction
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Normal, IL
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 211 mm
Width: 138 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
234 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-62897-573-4 (9781628975734)
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
Persons
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 Malaga 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.
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.