Fish Soup

Margarita García Robayo

Jun 2018 · Charco Press

About this ebook

"...a gorgeous, blackly humorous look into the lives of Colombians struggling to find their place in society, both at home and abroad.” —Publishers Weekly, starred reviewIn two novellas and seven short stories, Fish Soup blends cynicism and beauty with a rich vein of dark humour."Waiting for a Hurricane" follows a girl obsessed with escaping both her life and her country. Emotionally detached from her family, and disillusioned with what the future holds if she remains, she takes ever more drastic steps to achieve her goal, seemingly oblivious to the damage she is causing both herself and those around her. "Worse Things" offers snapshots of lives in turmoil, frayed relationships, family taboos, and rejection of and by society. And "Sexual Education" examines the attempts of a student to tally the strict doctrine of abstinence taught at her school with the very different moral norms that prevail in her social circles.At once blunt and poetic, Garcia Robayo delves into the lives of her characters, simultaneously evoking sympathy and revulsion, challenging the reader’s loyalties throughout the remarkable universe that is Fish Soup .

About the author

Margarita García Robayo was born in 1980 in Cartagena, Colombia, and now lives in Buenos Aires where she teaches creative writing and works as a journalist and scriptwriter. She is the author of several novels, including Hasta que pase un huracán (Waiting for a Hurricane ) and Educación Sexual (Sexual Education , both included in Fish Soup ), Holiday Heart, and Lo que no aprendí (The Things I have Not Learnt). She is also the author of a book of autobiographical essays Primera Persona (First Person, forthcoming with Charco Press) and several collections of short stories, including Worse Things , which obtained the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize in 2014 (also included in Fish Soup ). TheDelivery is her third book to appear in English after the very successful Fish Soup (selected by the TLS as one of the best fiction titles of 2018) and Holiday Heart (Winner of the English PEN Award).

Charlotte Coombe is a British literary translator, working from French and Spanish. Her translation of Abousse Shalmani’s Khomeini, Sade and Me (2016) won a PEN Translates award. She has translated novels by Anna Soler-Pont and Asha Miró, Marc de Gouvenain, as well as some non-fiction, short stories and poetry by Edgardo Nuñez Caballero, Rosa María Roffiel and Santiago Roncagliolo for Palabras Errantes . She is also the translator of Eduardo Berti’s novel The Imagined Land (2018). She has translated three titles for Charco Press: Ricardo Romero’s The President’s Room (2017) and Margarita García Robayo’s Fish Soup (2018) and Holiday Heart (2020).