Suiza

Description

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.

Bndicte Belpois spent her childhood in Algeria, she now lives in Franche-Comt where she works as a midwife. It was during a long stay in Spain that she began to write Suiza, her first novel. Alison Anderson's translations for Europa Editions include novels by Slim Nassib, Amlie Nothomb, and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. She has translated all of Muriel Barbery's novels.

"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 *