Dainerys Machado Vento

One of the most formidable voices on the current Latin American narrative scene.

Following the death of a mutual friend – known as the Lady – several women who periodically get together to tell and listen to each other’s stories, meet up on the same park bench where she used to convene them. One of them has entered a downward spiral of degrading, unsatisfactory sexual encounters owing to her inability to forget the great love of her life; Elena attends a gender reveal party with the idea of sabotaging it; Marta has returned full of prejudices from New York; Obdulia is a victim of her husband’s abuse and her town’s inherent racism; Magdalena is resigned to the transphobia of her in-laws; Soledad fantasizes about killing her mother after a lifetime of humiliations...

Selected by Granta as one of the best Spanish-language storytellers of this new generation, in Retratos de la orilla (Portraits from the Shore) Dainerys Machado deploys an irresistible array of voices where the female gaze is the true protagonist.