Permafrost’s no-bullshit lesbian narrator is an uninhibited lover and a wickedly funny observer of modern life. Desperate to get out of Barcelona, she goes to Brussels, ‘because a city whose symbol is a little boy pissing was a city I knew I would like’; as an au pair in Scotland, she develops a hatred of the color green. And everywhere she goes, she tries to break out of the roles set for her by family and society, chasing escape wherever it can be found: love affairs, travel, thoughts of suicide. 
Full of powerful, physical imagery, this prize-winning debut novel by acclaimed Catalan poet Eva Baltasar was a word-of-mouth hit in its own language. It is a breathtakingly forthright call for women’s freedom to embrace both pleasure and solitude, and speaks boldly of the body, of sex, and of the self.

Permafrost

Literature & Fiction

Baltasar, Eva

Literary

And Other Stories

Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname “Boulder.” When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already forty and can’t bear to let the opportunity pass her by. Boulder is less enthused, but doesn’t know how to say no―and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien. 
With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love. 
Once again, Eva Baltasar demonstrates her preeminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world―and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.

Boulder: Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

The followup novel to International Booker-shortlisted Boulder is a story of queer motherhood and survival deep in the countryside Mammoth's protagonist is a disenchanted young lesbian. She's inexperienced, irritated by life, eager to gestate, and determined to strip everything else down to essentials. She seduces men at random, swaps her urban habitat for an isolated farmhouse, befriends a shepherd, nurses lambs, battles stray cats, waits tables, cleans house, and dabbles in sex work--all in pursuit of life in the raw.&nbsp; This small bomb of a novel, not remotely pastoral, builds to a howling crescendo of social despair, leaving us at the mercy of Eva Baltasar's wild voice.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Mammoth

Uno de los mejores libros del 2018 según Babelia. Permafrost es el sorprendente debut de Eva Baltasar, una&nbsp; historia contundente, íntima y carnal de una protagonista con pulsiones&nbsp; suicidas que se protege del exterior pero se entrega con intensidad al sexo con otras mujeres, la literatura y el arte. El permafrost es esa capa de la tierra permanentemente congelada y es&nbsp; también la membrana que cubre a la protagonista de esta novela. Escrita&nbsp; en primera persona, nos presenta a una mujer en etapa de formación que&nbsp; se protege del exterior, que percibe la superficialidad en todo cuanto&nbsp; la rodea y huye de un entorno que nada tiene que ver con su manera de&nbsp; entender la vida: una madre obsesionada con la salud, omnipresente y&nbsp; controladora, y una hermana que afronta su existencia convencional con&nbsp; medicación y un positivismo irritante. La protagonista, que siente&nbsp; pulsiones suicidas, no permite que nadie se le acerque demasiado, pero&nbsp; al mismo tiempo se entrega con intensidad al sexo con otras mujeres, la&nbsp; literatura y el arte. El pulso entre el hedonismo, los placeres más&nbsp; carnales y la muerte es constante en esta novela, así como el tono&nbsp; mordaz de una protagonista que nos gana con su inteligencia y su humor negrísimo desde la primera página. Repleto de imágenes poéticas, contundentes y muy físicas, este carácter&nbsp; tan palpable del texto no es gratuito en una novela que nos&nbsp; habla del&nbsp; cuerpo, del sexo, del yo; una obra aguda y directa que reivindica la libertad femenina en el placer y en la soledad. Eva Baltasar inicia con Permafrost un tríptico de protagonistas&nbsp; femeninas que quiere explorar distintas etapas en la vida de las mujeres. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Permafrost is Eva Baltasar's surprising debut; a powerful, intimate, and raw story of a protagonist with suicidal impulses who shields herself from the outside world, but passionately gives herself to sex with other women, literature, and art. &nbsp; Permafrost is that layer of the earth that is permanently frozen, and it is also the membrane that covers the protagonist in this novel. &nbsp; Written in first person, it introduces us to a woman at the beginning of her life who protects herself from the outside world, one who never moves past the surface with anything around her, and who tries to flee from an environment that has nothing to do with the way she perceives life. A movement between self-satisfaction, bodily pleasures, and death is constant in this novel, as well as the riveting tone by a protagonist who wins the reader over with her intelligence and dark humor from the very first page. &nbsp; This text, full of poetic, forceful, and very physical imagery, talks about the body, sex, and the self; it is a sharp and direct work that reclaims female freedom when it comes to pleasure and solitude. &nbsp; With Permafrost, Eva Baltasar begins a trilogy of female protagonists that explores different stages of women's lives.

Permafrost (Spanish Edition)

United States

Literatura Random House

Eva Baltasar cierra el tríptico sobre la vida y los deseos de tres mujeres con una novela animal sobre una joven que abandona la ciudad para instalarse en una&nbsp;casa aislada. La protagonista de Mamut es una chica arcaica atrapada en la vida moderna. Su hábitat es la ciudad, donde trabaja para vivir. Quiere ser madre, y esto la obliga a acercarse a los hombres ¿Cómo resistir el hormiguero humano si tienes instinto de cazador solitario? Un día abandona la ciudad, cambia de entorno y se convierte en la dueña de una casa completamente aislada. Allí solo están el pastor, la soledad y bestias que te alimentan o te amenazan. El instinto trabaja, la conciencia se altera y se gesta una transformación. Esta no es una novela más sobre la huida al campo, esto es una bomba de relojería sobre las llagas de la sociedad contemporánea, una narración in crescendo que aúlla a merced de esta novelista salvaje que es Eva Baltasar. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Eva Baltasar closes this trilogy about the lives and desires of three women, with this beast of a novel about a young woman who leaves the city to settle in an isolated house. &nbsp; Mammut's protagonist is an old-fashioned girl trapped in modern life. Her habitat is the city, where she works in order to survive. She wants to become a mother, and this forces her to have to approach men. How can you resist the human hustle and bustle if you have the instinct of a lone hunter? &nbsp; One day she leaves the city, changes her entire environment, and buys a completely isolated house in the countryside. There, you can find only the sheepherder, solitude, and beasts that either feed you or threaten you. Instinct works, consciousness is altered, and a transformation takes place. &nbsp; This is not just another novel about fleeing to the countryside, this is a ticking time bomb about the wounds and lesions of contemporary society, a narrative in crescendo that howls at the mercy of this wild novelist that is Eva Baltasar.

Mamut / Mammut (Spanish Edition)

Después de la exitosa&nbsp;Permafrost, Boulder es la segunda novela del tríptico donde Eva Baltasar explora la voz, la vida y el cuerpo de tres mujeres. La protagonista de&nbsp;Boulder&nbsp;se gana la vida como cocinera en un viejo barco mercante. Es la situación perfecta: soledad, una cabina, el océano, algún puerto en el que conocer mujeres y horas para encarar el vacío, para sentir la fuerza de la provisionalidad. Hasta que un día una de ellas consigue que abandone el mar, acceda a vivir entre cuatro paredes y se implique en la gestación asistida y en la educación de un hijo. ¿Qué ha hecho la maternidad con la mujer que en su día conoció en un bar de la Patagonia? ¿Qué hará ella, animal enjaulado en una casa unifamiliar de Reikiavik? Todo ha cambiado excepto su apodo, Boulder: esas enormes piedras aisladas en medio del paisaje, expuestas a todo sin que nadie sepa de dónde vienen ni porque están ahí. Después de la exitosa&nbsp;Permafrost, esta es la segunda novela del tríptico donde Baltasar explora la voz, la vida y el cuerpo de tres mujeres. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION After the great success of Permafrost, Boulder is the second novel in the three-part series where Eva Baltasar explores the voice, life, and body of three women. &nbsp; The protagonist earns a living as a cook on an old merchant ship. It is the perfect scenario for her: solitude, a cabin, the ocean, ports in which to meet women, and endless hours to be alone with emptiness, to feel the force of what is provisional. Until one day one of them convinces her to leave the sea, to change all of it to live confined within four walls, to a pregnancy assisted by IVF, and rearing a child. What has motherhood done with the woman she once met at a bar in Patagonia? What is she going to do, a caged animal in a single-family house in Reykjavik? &nbsp; Everything has changed except for her nickname, Boulder: those huge isolated rock forms in the middle of landscapes, exposed to all the elements without anyone knowing where they came from or why they are there.

Boulder (Spanish Edition)

Permagel

Contemporary

Club Editor

Mamut

Genre Fiction

CLUB EDITOR 1959, S.L.

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