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The Wonders

By Elena Medel
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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
The Wonders by Elena Medel weaves the lives of María and Alicia, two women from different generations in Spain, navigating personal struggles and societal changes. Both are impacted by the socio-economic challenges faced by women across decades, offering a profound exploration of ambition, identity, and the quest for a better life within the constraints of their circumstances. The novel delves into themes of feminism, class, and the intertwining of past and present.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$2799
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you enjoy narratives that weave together the lives of women across generations, illuminating their struggles and hopes against the backdrop of societal change in Spain. With its lyrical prose and deep character exploration, it offers a thoughtful reflection on family, work, and the silent bonds that connect us all.

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New in paperback: an audacious, critically acclaimed debut about working-class women's livesacross two generations, heralding a new European literary star

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Maria and her granddaughter Alicia have never met. Decades apart, both make the same journey to Madrid in search of work and independence.

Maria, scraping together a living as a cleaner and carer, sends money back home for the daughter she hardly knows. Alicia, raised in prosperity until a family tragedy, is now trapped in a poorly paid job and a cycle of banal infidelities. Their lives are marked by precarity, and by the haunting sense of how things might have been different.

Through a series of arresting vignettes, Elena Medel weaves together a broken family's story, stretching from the last years of Franco's dictatorship to mass feminist protests in contemporary Madrid. Audacious, intimate, and shot through with razor-edged lyricism, The Wonders is a revelatory novel about the many ways that lives are shaped by class, history, and feminism: about what has changed for working-class women, and what has remained stubbornly the same.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

The Wonders by Elena Medel is heralded as a poetically delicate but strong novel, leaving a significant impression on the reader's imagination. Medel's prose captivates with its hypnotic style, drawing readers into its multigenerational narrative set against a backdrop of class and feminist themes, capturing the complexity of family ties. The book is praised for painting a collective picture of working-class Spanish womanhood with a structure that is both bold and ingeniously fragmented, revealing incremental yet remarkable changes over time.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781782276593

Publisher: Pushkin Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 30 March 2023

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Pushkin Press

Contributors:

  • Translated by Thomas Bunstead
  • Translated by Lizzie Davis
  • Translated by Thomas Bunstead

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 224

Collections

Elena Medel Fiction Fiction in Translation General Fiction Literary Fiction

About the Author

Elena Medel was born in Cordoba in 1985 and lives in Madrid. She is the author of three poetry collections and two works of non-fiction. At 19 she founded the poetry publishing house La Bella Varsovia, one of the most prestigious in the Spanish-speaking world. She is the recipient of the XXVI Loewe Prize for Young Poets, the Princess of Girona Foundation Arts and Literature Award 2016 for the whole of her work and the Francisco Umbral Prize for the Best Book Of The Year 2020. The Wonders is her first novel, and will be translated into thirteen languages.

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