San Francisco: Elvira Navarro on The Voices of Adriana with Sarah Rose Etter
Green Apple Books on the Park welcomes Spanish author Elvira Navarro for the San Francisco stop of her US tour celebrating the English release of her novel The Voices of Adriana. She will be in conversation with Sarah Rose Etter.
A thrilling metafiction about grief, the internet, and the difficulty of knowing others, The Voices of Adriana combines the psychological acuity of Marguerite Duras with the creative possibility of One Thousand and One Nights.
Adriana has become obsessed with her father’s online dating. Recently widowed, he’s on a self-destructive, manic search for a partner to accompany him through his twilight years. At the same time, her life as an isolated grad student feels unreal, and to fill the void of her mother’s death, Adriana begins writing, trying on different voices. She builds worlds from the online profiles of her father’s flings, that is until more fundamental voices—those of her grandmother and mother—begin calling out to her in the night. The Voices of Adriana, the latest from Spanish writer Elvira Navarro, is an innovative novel about grief and how we might reanimate the voices of those we’ve lost, not as ghosts, but as living parts of ourselves.
Elvira Navarro (Huelva, Spain, 1978) has published both novels and short stories. Her novel A Working Woman, which addresses the impact of the economic crisis on the contemporary female experience, has established her as a leading voice in Spanish literature. She has been the recipient of numerous significant accolades in Spain, including the Jaén Novel Prize and the Andalusian Critics’ Prize. Additionally, Granta magazine has identified her as one of the twenty-two most distinguished Spanish writers under the age of thirty-five. Her collection of short stories, Rabbit Island, has been nominated for the 2021 National Book Award for Foreign Literature. Her most recent novel, The Voices of Adriana, has been awarded the 2023 Cálamo Special Prize.
Sarah Rose Etter is the author of RIPE (Scribner), and The Book of X (Two Dollar Radio), winner of the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award. Her short fiction collection, Tongue Party, was selected by Deb Olin Unferth to be published as the winner of the 2011 Caketrain Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, TIME, BOMB, The Cut, VICE, and more.