Undiscovered: A Novel

"With tremendous intellect and her irreverent wit, Wiener rescues an intimate story from the family archive, a story that is also the infamous history of our continent. Her prose, sober and forward, is a breath of fresh air; her view allows us to be testimonies of Latin America's cycles of plundering and looting."--Valeria Luiselli, author of The Lost Children Archive and Tell Me How It Ends An award-winning Peruvian journalist and writer delivers her stunning English breakthrough, blending fact and fiction in an autobiographical novel that faces the legacy of colonialism through one woman's family ties to both the colonized and colonizer. Alone in a museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener finds herself confronted by her complicated family heritage. Visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artifacts, she peers at countless sculptures of Indigenous faces each nearly identical to her own and recognizes herself in them - but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener. Wiener's "grand" contribution to history: the near rediscovery of Machu Picchu, nearly 4,000 plundered artifacts, a book about Peru, and a bastard child. In the wake of her father's death, Gabriela begins to unpack the legacy that is her birthright. From the brutal racism she encounters in her ancestor Charles's book to her father's infidelity, she traces a cycle of abandonment, jealousy and colonial violence, in turn reframing her own personal struggles with desire, love, and race. As she explores the history of two continents, her investigation brings her closer and closer to the more intimate realm where both colonizer and colonized ultimately converge- the body- and her own desire to free it. Guided by a penetrating eye and fearsome wit, Undiscovered embarks the reader on a quest to pick up the pieces of something shattered long ago in the hopes of making it whole once again. Probing wounds both personal and historical, Undiscovered is a culminating labor for our age, an earnest attempt to decolonize one's own desire. Translated by Julia Sanches

Literature & Fiction

Wiener, Gabriela

United States

HarperVia

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE "An intimate story from the family archive that is also the infamous history of our continent."--Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive&nbsp; Award-winning Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener delivers her stunning English breakthrough in this "appealingly raw" (NPR) and "incisive" (Publishers Weekly) work of autofiction that explores colonialism through one woman's family ties to both the colonized and colonizer.&nbsp; Alone in a museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener confronts her complicated family heritage. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artifacts, spoils of European colonialism, many stolen from her homeland of Peru. As she peers at countless sculptures of Indigenous faces, each resembling her own, she sees herself in them--but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener.&nbsp; In the wake of her father's death, Gabriela returns to Peru. In alternating strands, she begins to probe her father's infidelity, her own polyamorous relationship, and the history of her colonial ancestor, unpacking the legacy that is her birthright. From the eye-patched persona her father adopted to carry out his double life to the brutal racism she encounters in her ancestor Charles's book, she traces a cycle of abandonment, jealousy, and fraud, in turn reframing her own personal struggles with desire, love, and race.&nbsp; Translated by Julia Sanches

Nine Moons

Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2020 From the daring Peruvian essayist and provocateur behindSexographies comes a fierce and funny exploration of sex, pregnancy, and motherhood that delves headlong into our fraught fascination with human reproduction. Women play all the time with the great power that's been conferred upon us: it's fun to think about reproducing. Or not reproducing. Or walking around in a sweet little dress with a round belly underneath that will turn into a baby to cuddle and spoil. When you're fifteen, the idea is fascinating, it attracts you like a piece of chocolate cake. When you're thirty, the possibility attracts you like an abyss. Gabriela Wiener is not one to shy away from unpleasant truths or to balk at a challenge. She began her writing career by infiltrating Peru's most dangerous prison, going all in at swingers clubs, ingesting ayahuasca in the Amazon jungle. So at 30, when she gets unexpectedly pregnant, she looks forward to the experience the way a mountain climber approaches a precipitous peak. With a scientist's curiosity and a libertine's unbridled imagination, Wiener hungrily devours every scrap of information and misinformation she encounters during the nine months of her pregnancy. She ponders how pleasure and pain always have something to do with things entering or exiting your body. She laments that manuals for pregnant women don't prepare you for ambushes of lust or that morning sickness is like waking up with a hangover and a guilty conscience all at once. And she tries to navigate the infinity of choices and contradictory demands a pregnant woman confronts, each one amplified to a life-and-death decision. While pregnant women are still placed on pedestals, or used as political battlegrounds, or made into passive objects of study, Gabriela Wiener defies definition. With unguarded humor and breathtaking directness,Nine Moons questions the dogmas, upends the stereotypes, and embraces all the terror, beauty, and paradoxes of the propagation of the species.

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Restless Books

“No other writer in the Spanish-speaking world is as fiercely independent and thoroughly irreverent as Gabriela Wiener. Constantly testing the limits of genre and gender, Wiener’s work … has bravely unveiled truths some may prefer remain concealed about a range of topics, from the daily life of polymorphous desire to the tiring labor of maternity.” —Cristina Rivera Garza, author of The Iliac Crest In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives. Sexographies is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.

Sexographies

Gabriela Wiener writes about who she is and the way in which she lives, and does so with refreshing sincerity. These autobiographical stories invite us to immerse ourselves in her world and take a good look at a woman fighting her demons. It addresses a variety of issues such as migration, motherhood, fear of death, loneliness of hotel rooms, triplets, the mysterious number eleven, and many others. This book makes the everyday appear as something rich and complex.

Llamada perdida (Spanish Edition)

Malpaso Editorial

Edición ampliada de las crónicas sexuales de Gabriela Wiener, un recorrido temerario y trepidante por el lado más salvaje del periodismo narrativo, con prólogo de Camila Sosa Villada.\n«Gabriela Wiener es una fuerza de la naturaleza y así escribe: un terremoto sobre nuestros tabúes y prejuicios. Este es un libro inteligente y delicioso». —María Fernanda Ampuero\n«Gracias a Belcebú por la mano atrevida de Gabriela Wiener y por su libro, que desorienta a cualquiera que cree sabérselas todas sobre sexo. [...] Este libro es una criatura con sus propios caprichos, que conoce bien el camino al éxtasis, que entristece y desboca como cualquiera de nosotros. Una Wiener que se queda sobre nuestro pecho derramando preguntas mortales como un veneno. La incógnita sobre el sexo, sobre su estrategia para sobrevivir, renovarse y asegurar su perpetuidad. Cuán lejos podemos llegar para sentir algo, qué tan abajo, qué tan arriba y dónde se refugia nuestro placer. A pesar de haber sido escrito durante las últimas dos décadas, Sexografías me hizo pensar en lo necesario que es el sexo para nuestra cultura. Lo tengamos o no, lo deseemos o no. [...] ¿Que si me calenté al leer Sexografías? Sí. ¿Leyendo crónicas periodísticas? Sí. [...] Este libro no pide piedad, pero exige que no mezquinemos cuerpo como lectores. Si la escritora vende así su alma al diablo por la palabra, por qué nosotros no responder con la misma entrega». —Del prólogo de Camila Sosa Villada\nENGLISH DESCRIPTION\n“No other writer in the Spanish-speaking world is as fiercely independent and thoroughly irreverent as Gabriela Wiener. Constantly testing the limits of genre and gender, Wiener’s work … has bravely unveiled truths some may prefer remain concealed about a range of topics, from the daily life of polymorphous desire to the tiring labor of maternity.” ―Cristina Rivera Garza, author of The Iliac Crest\nIn fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle―all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes.\nFortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives. Sexographies is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.

Sexografías / Sexographies (Spanish Edition)

Arts & Literature

Literatura Random House

La muerte de su padre y los fantasmas de su herencia marcan el retorno de Wiener con esta exploración memorable sobre el amor, el deseo, los celos y el racismo.\nUn huaco retrato es una pieza de cerámica prehispánica que buscaba representar los rostros indígenas con la mayor precisión posible. Se dice que capturaba el alma de las personas, un registro que ha sobrevivido oculto en el espejo roto de los siglos.\nEstamos en 1878, y el explorador judío-austriaco Charles Wiener se prepara para ser reconocido por la comunidad académica en la Exposición Universal de París, una gran feria de "progresos tecnológicos" que cuenta entre sus atracciones con un zoo humano, culmen del racismo científico y del proyecto imperialista europeo. Wiener ha estado cerca de descubrir Machu Picchu, ha escrito un libro sobre el Perú, se ha llevado cerca de cuatro mil huacos y también un niño.\nCiento cincuenta años después, la protagonista de esta historia recorre el museo que acoge la colección Wiener para reconocerse en los rostros de los huacos que su tatarabuelo expolió. Sin más equipaje que la pérdida ni otro mapa que sus heridas abiertas, las íntimas y las históricas, persigue las huellas del patriarca familiar y las de la bastardía de su propia estirpe -que es la de muchos-, la búsqueda identitaria de nuestro tiempo: un archipiélago de abandonos, celos, culpas, racismo, vestigios fantasmales ocultos en las familias y la deconstrucción de un deseo tercamente anclado en un pensamiento colonial. Hay temblor y resistencia en estas páginas escritas con el aliento de quien recoge los pedazos de algo que se rompió hace tiempo, esperando que todo vuelva a encajar.\nENGLISH DESCRIPTION\nThe death of her father and the ghosts of her inheritance mark Wiener's return with this memorable exploration of love, desire, jealousy, and racism.\nA huaco portrait is a pre-Hispanic ceramic piece that sought to represent indigenous faces with the greatest possible precision. It is said that it captured the soul of the person, a record that has survived hidden in the broken mirror of the centuries.\nWe are in 1878, and the Jewish-Austrian explorer Charles Wiener is preparing to be recognized by the academic community at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, a great fair of "technological progress" that has among its attractions a human zoo, the culmination of scientific racism and the European imperialist project. Wiener has been close to discovering Machu Picchu, he has written a book about Peru, he has taken close to four thousand huacos and also a child.\nOne hundred and fifty years later, the protagonist of this story walks through the museum that houses the Wiener collection to recognize herself in the faces of the huacos that her great-great-grandfather plundered. With no more baggage than her loss or any map other than that of her open wounds, the intimate and the historical ones, she pursues the traces of the family patriarch and those of the bastardy of his own lineage -which is that of many-, the search for identity in our time: an archipelago of abandonment, jealousy, guilt, racism, ghostly vestiges hidden in families and the deconstruction of a desire stubbornly anchored in a colonial thought. There is trembling and resistance in these pages written with the breath of someone who picks up the pieces of something that was broken long ago, hoping that everything will fit together again.

Huaco retrato / Undiscovered (Spanish Edition)

Contemporary

Sexografías

Melusina

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wiener, Gabriela. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wiener, Gabriela

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wiener, Gabriela. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Undiscovered: A Novel

Undiscovered: A Novel

Nine Moons

Sexographies

Nine Moons

Llamada perdida (Spanish Edition)

Sexografías / Sexographies (Spanish Edition)

Huaco retrato / Undiscovered (Spanish Edition)

Sexografías