Eating Ashes: A Novel

Alone and adrift in Barcelona, an unnamed narrator is haunted by her teenage brother’s death. Plagued by memories of the little boy she helped raise in Mexico while their mother struggled to make a living in Spain, she recounts the events that led to this moment: from the acute loneliness that accompanied their emigration to Madrid; to her activism against labor abuses, which is threatened by her dangerous relationship with a wealthy lover; up to the final, heavyhearted confrontation with her brother. To balm her Ulysses syndrome—the violent rupture between the life left behind and the one she toils to build—the narrator develops a compulsion with her brother’s ashes: touching and tasting them, instilling within her a strange peace. Masterfully translated by Megan McDowell, Eating Ashes announces Brenda Navarro to English readers as a breathtakingly unique and vital voice in world literature.