Guadalupe Nettel was born in Mexico and grew up between Mexico and France. She is the author of the international award winning novels El huésped [The Guest] (2006), The Body Where I Was Born (2011), After the Winter and Still Born (2020) and two collections of short stories, Bezoar (2008) and Natural Histories (2013), all published by Anagrama, the most prestigious of all Spanish-language publishing houses. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has appeared in publications such as Granta, The White Review, El País, The New York Times, The Passenger, La Repubblica and La Stampa. She’s the director of the magazine Revista de la Universidad de México. Her books have been adapted as theater pieces, performances and films.
Still born has been shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize.
Books translated into English
Awards and distinctions
Guadalupe Nettel’s books have received awards such as the Herralde Prize (2014), the Ribera del Duero Prize (2013), the Anna Seghers Prize (2009), the Antonin Artaud Award (2008), the Gilberto Owen National Prize (2007), the Prix Radio France Internationale (1993) and the Punto de Partida Award. (1992). She was a finalist for the Von Rezzori Prize and the Neudstat Prize. In 2008 she was a recipient of the French Centre National des Lettres fellowship and in 2020 she received the Albert & Elaine Bourchard Foundation.
Praise for Guadalupe Nettel’s work
‘Guadalupe Nettel is free. She has fought tenaciously, since his first book, to eliminate hackneyed dogmas and inherited truths, and his merit is notable: under the most overcast skies, she has managed to carry out her own audacious narrative discourse, a singular and audacious way of being in the world. An essential voice of the new Latin American literature.’
—Enrique Vila-Matas
‘Nettel creates marvelous parallels between the sorrows and follies of her human characters and the creatures they live with.’ —Carmela Ciuraru, The New York Times
‘The look that she poses on soft or destructive follies, mania, deviations is of such sharpness that it refers us to our own obsessions’ —Xavier Houssin, Le Monde
‘Guadalupe Nettel is a brilliant anatomist of love and perversity, and each new book is a revelation.’ —Katie Kitamura
‘Guadalupe Nettel is a luminous writer of dark humor and wild insight. ’ —Nick Flynn
Praise for Still Born
‘In Still Born, Guadalupe Nettel renders with great veracity life as it is encountered in the everyday, taking us to the heart of the only things that really matter: life, death, and our relationships with others.’
Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize
‘Still Born is an astonishingly elegant, intelligent, affecting novel, which has stayed in my mind from the moment I began it to long after I finished. I felt a huge sense of relief that I had encountered a work of art about ambivalence in mothering which encompassed a true authentic range of emotions and curiosities — vanity, aggression, jealousy and selfishness — with sanguine acceptance, as well as the beautiful and difficult project of giving and sustaining love which marks all our lives, mothers or otherwise.’
Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation
‘I read Still Born in less than a day. It is perfect: deeply feminist, wise, funny and alive. Nettel is generous to each of her characters, and in prose that is crisp and light. I love this book.’
Yara Rodrigues Fowler, author of there are more things
‘An unflinching, compassionate meditation on mothers, daughters and sisters – both blood-related and chosen – Still Born stirred me and consoled me, renewing my faith in the power of women’s communities. Guadalupe Nettel has managed the impossible task of writing a work of both exacting honesty and immense tenderness, on one of the most delicate topics.’
Livia Franchini, author of Shelf Life
‘For readers of Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti, a profound novel about caretaking and creativity from one of Mexico’s greatest living writers .’
Paul Theroux, author of The Mosquito Coast
‘Still Born is a startling novel about whatever it is that drives adults to take care of children, and all the many things that make that care painful and sometimes impossible. There is a quiet force to the poised and deliberate writing. The novel is a deep exploration of affection and vulnerability.’
Caleb Klaces, author of Fatherhood
‘Still Born is a rare thing: an unsentimental analysis of the ambivalences and moral complexity of motherhood. It is a book which demands to be discussed, at length, with friends, and I longed to do so.’
Jessie Greengrass, author of The High House
‘After reading Still Born -in one breath and with infinite admiration- I can only use the words literature and masterpiece.’
Andrea Marcolongo, author of La Lingua Geniale
Contact
Indent Agency: Andrea Montejo (andrea@indentagency.com) and Paula Canal (paula@indentagency.com)