Prima

In the middle of the 1960s, a young girl from a middle-class Mexican background finds herself living, and then re-living, through a period of years that have somehow become entangled with each other and lost any rational consistency. The fantastic, fantasy-filled world of childhood seems to be taking over her future as well. The girl will try out various kinds of remedy (themselves borrowed from the world of fantasy) in order to overcome, or at least to temper, the dread that invades her world... until the inevitable capitulation her destiny clearly holds in store. This personal story manages to liberate itself from privately lived experience while keeping it alive right to the end, making it everyone's story. Carmen Boullosa is a writer who loves experimenting with various forms of expression and time schemes, mixing narrative levels and styles within her works. Here she tells her infant years through her memories, while making of her childhood a mirror for the childhoods of each one of us. She reminds us of that brief period which ends when Nature itself dies, but which must never be forgotten - if not relived - if we want to understand where we have come from and what made us what we find ourselves to be in the new 'grown-up' world that awaits us. Original publication: Antes, Editorial Vuelta, Coyoacan Mexico, 2005 1st Italian edition: June 2012 (translation by David Iori)