A powerful story of dysfunctional love
Tomas is a wealthy farmer, rough and taciturn, as rooted in the land as the eucalyptus trees he grows under the Galician sun. When he's diagnosed with lung cancer, he tells no-one.
Suiza is a damaged young woman, strikingly beautiful, barely literate, a run-away. Her only dream, to see the sea.
The relationship that ensues is as passionate and tender as it is troubling and nuanced. How transformative can love really be? As happiness and the promise of healing beckon, the darkness that has been spreading underneath all along will reveal itself, bringing the narrative to a heart-stopping, heart-wrenching denouement.
Benedicte Belpois lives in Besancon, where she works as a midwife. She spent her childhood in Algeria. Suiza, her first novel, was written during a long stay in Galicia. Alison Anderson's translations for Europa Editions include novels by Selim Nassib, Amelie Nothomb, and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. She is the translator of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa, 2008) and The Life of the Elves (Europa, 2016) by Muriel Barbery.
Title: Suiza
Author: Belpois, Bénédicte
ISBN: 9781787703261
Binding:
Publisher: Europa Editions (UK) Ltd
Publication Date: 2021-07-15
Number of Pages: 224
Weight: 0.2361 kg
Suiza is a perfect capsule of everything I love in a novel: beauty, darkness, humour; it covers the whole range of human emotions, and lays them bare under the sun of Galicia.
Just as the book seems to be veering towards a familiar Beauty and the Beast tale of transformation, the narrative takes a darker turn. * The Irish Times *