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The Miracles - Las maravillas (Patakis Publications)

18:25

Presentation

Elena Medel

They walk the same dimly lit streets, train stations and bars, live in dirty apartment buildings, find solace in literature, have learned to keep quiet and pretend that everything is fine. What is the best way for a woman to forget?

Maria believes that our lives are not defined by family but by money. When she decides to leave her provincial town to work in the capital, she also abandons her newborn daughter. At night, however, that baby comes to her mind. Many years later, the granddaughter she never met, Alithia, abandons her mother and tries to survive in the capital by working as a saleswoman. She has no dreams, only the same nightmare: her father's suicide. Grandmother and granddaughter each have their own version of what happened. They will never meet, although, in some way, they will cross paths.

From Cordoba in the late 1960s to present-day Madrid, from the funeral of General Franco to the struggles of the feminist movement, Miracles rush through the years and History, giving voice to invisible, yet courageous women, despite the lack of love and the burden of their origins.

Elena Medel (b. 1985) has published a dozen books of poetry, essays and fiction. The most recent are the novels Todos mis pecados y la mitad de mi dolor (2026) and Las maravillas (2020), winner of the Francisco Umbral Book of the Year Award 2020 and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2023. Her work has been translated into seventeen languages, including Greek. She was awarded with the XXVI Loewe Prize for Young Poets, shortlisted for The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer's Award 2025, and a writer-in-residence at MALBA, Arvo Pärt Center and Passa Porta. She is currently based in Madrid.

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