©Alejandra López
Books by Claudia Piñeiro
Born in Buenos Aires, Claudia Piñeiro is a best-selling author. She has won numerous national & international prizes, including the Pepe Carvalho Prize, the LiBeraturpreis and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize. Many of her novels have been adapted for the big screen, including Elena Knows (Netflix), and she’s also a playwright and scriptwriter. Her novel Elena Knows was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.
“Elena Knows is a day in the life of a woman with advanced Parkinson’s disease. Technically it’s a crime novel, a thriller—of sorts. It’s about a woman whose daughter has died recently, and wrapped up by the police who have said that it’s a straightforward suicide. But Elena knows that it’s not, because she knows that her daughter would never have gone near the church when it was raining, because she was terrified of lightening, and there was a lightning rod on the church, and so on, and so on. But actually, Elena Knows is an extraordinarily beautiful and harrowing description of aging and disability. Everything that happens in it happens to the rhythm of the pills she needs to take, every time she needs to stop and sit down, to pause on her way to get to the metro or the church. So, in fact, as a book, it is much closer to something like Elizabeth is Missing or Olive Kitteridge than a crime novel.” Read more...
The Best of World Literature: The 2022 International Booker Prize Shortlist
Frank Wynne, Translator
Interviews with Claudia Piñeiro
-
1
Not a River: A Novel
by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott -
2
Fever Dream: A Novel
by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell -
3
Eartheater: A Novel
by Dolores Reyes, translated by Julia Sanches -
4
The Adventures of China Iron
by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre -
5
Confession
by Martín Kohan, translated by Daniel Hahn
Five of the Best 21st-Century Argentinian Novels, recommended by Claudia Piñeiro
Five of the Best 21st-Century Argentinian Novels, recommended by Claudia Piñeiro
You may be familiar with the work of the great Argentinian authors Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, but how about the country’s crop of contemporary writers? We asked Claudia Piñeiro, author of many bestselling and critically acclaimed books, to introduce us to five unmissable 21st-century Argentinian novels.
Interviews where books by Claudia Piñeiro were recommended
-
1
Tomb of Sand
by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell -
2
Cursed Bunny
by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur -
3
A New Name: Septology VI-VII
by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls -
4
Heaven
by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd -
5
The Books of Jacob: A Novel
by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft -
6
Elena Knows
by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle
The Best of World Literature: The 2022 International Booker Prize Shortlist, recommended by Frank Wynne
The Best of World Literature: The 2022 International Booker Prize Shortlist, recommended by Frank Wynne
The International Booker Prize celebrates the best fiction in translation published over the previous year. Frank Wynne, acclaimed translator and chair of the 2022 judging panel, tells Five Books about the six novels that made the shortlist, and reminds readers that world literature need not be tough, consumed only in the interests of self-improvement—but is often joyful, surprising and full of feeling.
