José Ovejero

A harsh portrait of the world being inherited by the new generations.

Ana is seventeen, and does not like the world around her. She rejects a mother who thinks she can save the planet by selling handbags made of recycled materials, and a father who resigns himself to ever-deteriorating working conditions on the radio. That’s why she leaves a home that should theoretically protect her, and moves into a squatter house. There, surrounded by the warmth of others who’ve sought refuge from the fierce world of precarious wages, where locals are being crowded out by franchises, hotels and tourist apartments, she throws herself into the only life that holds any meaning for her: belonging to a community of resistance, where violence is not out of the question.

From her squatter house in Lavapiés, in a contemporary Madrid that could be any other major city today, she decides to stand up to the demands of a society that gradually pushes out the weakest. Meanwhile, her parents try to convince her to come home, as they try to avoid being torn apart by an increasingly ruthless job market.

Insurrección shows some of the major tensions and fractures of our time, without resorting to ideological clichés or reassuring solutions. Its disoriented, fragile characters struggle to solve their problems in ways readers will find familiar.