Elena Knows

Product Information

I’m trying to find a way to cope with it. I was worried that I would burn out, but I think it’s important to talk about this – not just rape, but the harassment that follows anyone who speaks out,” she says. this woman who rang her doorbell to call in a twenty-year-old debt that she hasn’t forgotten. Isabel hasn’t forgotten the debt either, but she remembers things differently.” chapter 2, section III.

Have you ever been overwhelmed by kindness? Where have you seen kindness dispel hate or antagonism or obstinance or other force against kindness? How do you spread kindness? Quotes Elena Knows' is the translation by Francis Riddle of 'Elena sabe' by Claudia Piñeiro and published by Charco Press, whose mission "focuses on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world. We aim to act as a cultural and linguistic bridge for you to be able to access a brand new world of fiction that has, until now, been missing from your reading list." I have always been fascinated with okapis because they look like made-up animals, or creatures assembled in a drunken stupor,” says 48-year-old Leky, speaking from her flat in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg. “This novel was similar: I wanted to bring together parts that didn’t necessarily feel like they belonged together.” Yes, Elena had a difficult relationship with her daughter Rita. Rita is her main caretaker. What they say to each other is painful. When Rita dies, Elena is hellbent on proving that Rita did not kill herself. She tells anyone who will listen that Elena loved Rita and Rita loved her. It may not have appeared that way, but they did love each other.How does the current Russian government’s response compare? “In 1939, with the help of the NKVD, the epidemic was avoided. In 2020, it failed,” she says. “But we do not know which is more dangerous for humankind: the plague or the secret police.” Matthew Janney When I was a kid my mother worked as an elementary school librarian and my grandmother had been a librarian and professor of children’s literature so our house was filled with kids’ books. My earliest memories are of being so obsessed with certain poems that I would ask to be read them over and over to the point that I had them memorised. My favourites were from The Golden Books Treasury of Elves and Fairies and A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. I can still to this day recite poems from these books.

In Buenos Aires, where we both live, I spoke with award-winning, best-selling Argentine author Claudia Piñeiro about her book Elena Knows, out in my translation this week from Charco Press. A powerful book. While this is a short read, there is much to discuss about the control individuals have over our bodies, complexity of familial relationships, perspective and so much more.

Translated from Spanish (Argentina) by Frances Riddle (Charco Press, 2021)

In this short but impactful read, we follow Elena, an ageing woman suffering from advanced Parkinson’s. Unconvinced her daughter’s death was the suicide everyone else thinks it is, she decides to investigate. Over the course of a single day, Elena travels across Buenos Aires to meet a woman who she thinks can help her, whilst also recalling memories of her strained relationship with her daughter and how her disease has progressed since her first diagnosis. ⁠ Very pleased to see this book not just longlisted but now shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022!

Claudia Piñeiro: The need to write was ontological in the sense that it came formatted in my DNA, the need to express myself with the written word. What I’ve had to do over the course of my life is find out how to do it as well as possible. At first, it was a more chaotic, less systematic search. Then, when I went to university, I was going to study sociology. Sociology isn’t literature, but it’s a more humanistic degree than economics, which is what I ended up studying because the military dictatorship in Argentina had closed all the humanities departments, including sociology, at that time. I had to finish up my degree in whatever I could, and I chose between the options available. So my literary formation didn’t come from school. But I always went to literary workshops with different teachers. At that time, and still today, creative writing workshops are very common. Not within the academic framework but outside of it, in houses or bars or cafés where a very well-known, important writer will give a creative writing workshop. I went to several, but the person I recognize as my mentor was Guillermo Saccomanno. I studied with him the longest. Then I completed a degree in screenwriting and writing for the theatre. I think that Elena Knows has something of dramatic writing in it. It could be a play. If I could sum it up: my formation has been just me seeking out things I could add on to learn to write better.

Last year, aged 25, Daas was hailed as the voice of a new generation for her first novel, La Petite Dernière (published in English this autumn as The Last One), a first-person narrative of a young woman called Fatima navigating the contradictions of her own identity – asthmatic, not conforming to gender norms, gay, devoted to her Muslim faith, a bolshy rebel who got top grades. In the early hours of 4 April 2015, Shiori Ito awoke in a Tokyo hotel room to find a man on top of her. The last thing she could remember was sharing a meal and drinks with him. When it the alleged sexual assault was over, and she had returned from the bathroom, distressed and in pain, the man asked if he could keep her underwear as a “souvenir”. Ito crumpled to the floor. Staring down at her, the man said: “Before, you seemed like a strong, capable woman, but now you’re like a troubled child. It’s adorable.” Translator Frances Riddle has translated many Spanish authors including Isabel Allende, Claudia Pineiro, Leila Guerriero, Maria Femanda Ampero and Sara Gallaro. She’s originally from Houston, Texas and lives in Buenos Aires. When I won the Clarín Alfaguara Prize for Thursday Night Widows, José Saramago and Rosa Montero were on the jury. At the party, after announcing I was the winner and amid all the excitement, Saramago told me: ‘Make sure you talk to Rosa because we wanted to tell you something about your text, and she’ll explain it better than me.’ After a while Saramago appeared again and repeated: ‘Did you speak to Rosa yet?’ And then again. Finally, after the catering and the champagne, I had the chance to talk to Rosa Montero, and she told me: ‘Review the text before you publish. We think that the novel should end before it does. You explain too much, you say things that should remain unsaid.’ And of course they were absolutely right! In my inexperience, I wanted to explain everything to the reader, out of fear they wouldn’t understand the text the way I wanted them to. That day I learned that you have to trust your readers; taking that risk brings great benefits to the text. The book is short yet moves slowly and painfully like Elena and captures the trauma of having one's life governed by a disease progressively worsening. The writing is taut and captures the ambiance of sorrow and suffering. It is an excellent book, though sad, and I found it difficult to read at times because of the harsh reality it so vividly portrayed. Nevertheless, I felt Elena Knows deserved its Booker nomination.