Elena Quiroga

A classic about feminine empowerment in a world of men.

Elena Quiroga is usually included among the leading names of the women who emerged on the novel-writing scene in the second half of the twentieth century, and her work often appears associated with that of Carmen Laforet and Ana María Matute. And, of course, her novels are among the first in Spanish in the 1950s to accommodate the renovating techniques of the great European and American masters alongside the influence of the rich Spanish narrative tradition. And all from a strong feminist position that situates women as the protagonists of her novels, fighting for the recognition of their rights in a society where feminine initiatives and education encountered so many limitations.

In The Sick Woman, two women experience a catharsis in different ways: one tries to find meaning in her life by distancing herself from her closest surroundings; the other refuses deliberately and definitively to look for that meaning. This is a work that undoubtedly deserves a re-reading from the standpoint of a more modern sensibility.

“Elena Quiroga was one of the pillars of the last half century, one of the great female representatives of the novel.”  Manuel Seco