Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Maren Wiederhold
Categories
Fiction: narrative themes

LA HISTÒRIA DELS VERTEBRATS

Mar García Puig

A novel about anxiety and the healing power of the stories of the women who came before us. A journey through personal wounds and universal struggles through the eyes of art and literature. Will appeal to readers of Rivka Galchen's Little Labours, Irene Vallejo's Infinity in a Reed & Deborah Levy's Living Autobiography.

«On the 20th of December 2015, I became a mother, and I lost my mind. [...] That same day, Spain voted in elections in which a new party participated for the first time [...], and the hope of change hung over the day. At dusk, when I was counting contractions in the labour room, the country was counting seats. And both of those stories came together in a new life for me, because one of those seats was going to be mine. The same day my children were born, I became a deputy in Congress.» What should have been the happiest day in the narrator's life, becomes the beginning of a crazy story. Her anxiety takes hold, and the weight of the world falls on her shoulders twice over: she must care for her new-born twins, and give a voice to those who have trusted her with their vote. LA HISTORIA DE LOS VERTEBRADOS delves into a personal wound to bring out universal struggles and connections. It is a journey through art, literature, mythology, and the history of medicine. Mar García Puig masterfully transforms her personal experience into a story that tells us about all the women who have ever felt that sanity was leaving them, and to tell us of all the men who have silenced them, men protected by centuries of science, myths and politics. Mar García Puig (Barcelona, 1977) has a degree in English Philology and a master's degree in Linguistics. An editor by profession, she has published articles in several national outlets. She is a contributor to the books LGTBI (Sembra Llibres, 2020), Neorrancios. Sobre los peligros de la nostalgia (Península, 2022) and Más que visibles (Egales, 2022). Since 2015 she has been a deputy in the Congress of Deputies, where she is a spokesperson for the Culture and Equality Commissions. She lives between Madrid and Barcelona. La historia de los vertebrados (PRH, 2023) is her first solo work.

Available products
Book Published 2023-03-23 by La Magrana

Comments

Honest and courageous, erudite and intelligent, the book transcends the personal case and rethinks the perception of mental disorder and the problem of the medicalization of society. - Babelia/El País Also mentioned in: La Vanguardia Culturas/La Vanguardia El Periódico El Mundo/El Cultural El Español Read more...

The book of the year.

Catalan: La Magrana ; English World: Peninsula Press ; France: Globe ; Brazil: Bazar do Tempo

A unique, brave, and amazing book that ties together the intimate and the historical, the familiar and the mythological, poetry and politics, love and pain, madness and lucidity, to delicately illuminate one of the darkest faces of motherhood.

A wonderful hybrid book, as monumental as it is intimate. Her words resonate simultaneously with our political and poetic sensibility: with La historia de los vertebrados, all of us crazy women understand the reason behind our melancholy, and we start to sing.

About the madness of mothers, their weaknesses and their strengths, often two sides of the same coin. An erudite book, tender and tough, and always honest.

Winner of the NoLlegiu Award 2023 as Best Book of the Year in the Non Fiction category

An intimate story of the thunderous explosion of affections that motherhood means, a story that is in turn political. Mar García Puig gives us the gift of her powerful experiences as a new mother and a new deputy, and with them she traces a link with literature, theatre, philosophy and art throughout the centuries. It is impossible not to be reminded of Deborah Levy's or Maggie Nelson's memoirs.

Freedom is therapeutic, someone wrote on the wall of an abandoned madhouse. That inscription is projected onto Mar García Puig's extraordinarily liberated book, as well conceived as it is executed. A powerful testimony of her experience of puerperal madness. A delirious and sane tapestry that weaves in various directions.