Rosa Ribas
Far
Translation by Charlotte Coombe
SPAIN
ISBN: 978-1-7384463-4-6
In a residential development in the middle of the nowhere, one of the many that were built in Spain, but never finished because of the crash, a small community of neighbours is trying to lead a normal life, despite living far from everything. Beyond the development that promised every luxury, beyond the streets leading nowhere, behind a high metal fence, the unfinished houses menace the inhabitants as they become occupied by people on the fringes of society whom the crash has destroyed.
Rosa Ribas’s unnamed protagonists come from different sides of this fence. The atmospheric, disturbing, and addictive story of their growing relationship is half quirky love story half strong commentary on how easily and quickly people can fall through the cracks of society. Although the message is entirely universal, the context is deliciously and uniquely Spanish.
ROSA RIBAS was born in El Prat de Llobregat in 1963. She has a degree in Hispanic Philology from the University of Barcelona, and spent time in Frankfurt at the Goethe University and the Instituto Cervantes. She now lives and works in Barcelona again and the city plays a big role in her writing. Rosa is widely considered one of the queens of Spanish noir, achieving critical and commercial success in Spain with her Dark Years Trilogy (Siruela) and her Hernández trilogy (Tusquets). Far is her first foray away from crime fiction, into a more menacing social commentary. It is her first book to be translated into English.
CHARLOTTE COOMBE works from French and Spanish into English. She was shortlisted for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize 2023 for her co-translation of December Breeze by Marvel Moreno. In 2022 she won the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for her translation of Antonio Diaz Oliva’s short story ‘Mrs Gonçalves and the Lives of Others’, and she was shortlisted for the Valle Inclán Translation Prize 2019 for her translation of Fish Soup by Margarita García Robayo.