Eating Ashes

'Stunning... An energetic and harrowing new voice.' Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking

Winner of the Cálamo Award for the best book published in Spain in 2022

Winner of the Madrid Bookstores Association Award for the best book published in Spain in 2022

Winner of Todos tus libros Bookstores Spanish Association Award for the best book published in Spain in 2022

Winner of Arcebispo Juan de San Clemente Award for the best book published in Spanish language in Spain in 2023

A young man jumps five floors to his death. His sister tries to understand why. A searing novel about abandonment, belonging and migration, from an exciting new Latin American voice.

Five floors, six seconds, a body crashing to the ground. When our narrator's younger brother, Diego, takes his own life, she retreats into memories of the past, asking herself again and again: why? Revisiting their early years in Mexico, their childhood in Spain and the fragmentation and displacement that coloured their adult years, she pieces together a story of alienation and loss, but also of belonging, courage and hope. 

Now, she has to return to Mexico with Diego's ashes in hand. She finds a country that looks very different from the one she left behind and asks what it means to return to a home that never felt like one.

Eating Ashes is a tender, deeply poignant novel, shot through with flashes of dark humour, from a powerful new Latin American voice.