The Bitch: A Novel

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By Pilar Quintana FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATION “A perfect book.” —Kiran Desai, author of The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny “Unforgettable. . . a powerful, jolting tale about class, motherhood and rage.” — The Guardian In this intense, spare, brilliantly observed novel, a woman’s dangerously primal feelings are awakened when she adopts an orphaned puppy On a bluff overlooking Colombia’s rough Pacific coast, at the edge of the jungle—a world where nothing is taken for granted –Damaris lives in a shack with her fisherman husband. Her dream of a child unfulfilled and the warmth of her marriage cooled, she has reached the age “when women dry up,” as her uncle puts it. When the opportunity arises, she takes in a motherless puppy with eagerness and immediate affection. She does not yet know the risk she is taking in forging a bond that touches her most painful losses and her tenderest yearnings. In prose as terse as the villagers Damaris lives among, The Bitch evokes the double-edged force of the instinct to nurture and the desperate desire to be nurtured in turn.