La cabeza de mi padre
Children looking for their father. A daughter in search of her father. His abandonment and absence is the backbone of the story.
Confronted with loss, the author seeks to reconstruct the symbol of her father as a way of completing herself, and from this premise she tells the story of her life: The main character grows up among eight siblings, a working mother and misery, and reflects with eyes wide open not only on her biography, but also on the history of a classist, racist and deeply divided country where women have the most to lose, especially fatherless women.
At the age of forty, she sets out on her quest with three of her siblings and her mother. As she recounts her decision to meet him and the journey that takes her from Mexico City to Michoacán, she intersperses passages from her life.
PRESS
«One of the most outstanding Mexican writers and essayists of recent years.» Iker Olivares, Gatopardo
«Alma Delia Murillo weaves the story of her family. A tale of violence, misery, ingenuity, survival and blood; an odyssey to the depths of the heart of the author who has become one of the most talented voices in Mexican narrative today.» Almudena Barragán, El País
«Alma Delia Murillo writes with intelligence and a playful irony. To read her is to always find a company that brings joy.» Ángeles Mastretta, author of Women with Big Eyes
«In Mexican literature there are breezy, lucid, amusing, subversive voices that care for language, that illuminate; for me Alma Delia’s voice is what brings all those voices together.» Óscar de la Borbolla, author of El arte de dudar
«This is the best novel I have read in years. Demolishing, brutally passionate, savage and cultured, beautiful. I can’t shake it off me.» Pilar Eyre, author of De amor y de guerra
«The gift of words. Alma Delia Murillo knows how to seduce, her prose hits a nerve that displace any intellectual pretensions.» Yohan Uribe, El Siglo de Torreón
«Since she began her public struggle with words, I have discovered in Alma Delia Murillo the strength of a reflective memory full of irony. A dagger that mercilessly cuts through credulous solemnities and knows how to laugh at the world and at herself.» Alberto Ruy Sánchez, author awarded with the Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
TRANSLATIONS
Netherlands: Atlas Contact; Film: Redrum