Sara Mesa

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Sara Mesa at Literaktum  [ eu ]

Sara Mesa (born 1976) is a Spanish writer, widely translated and internationally recognized. Born in Madrid, she has lived in Seville since childhood. [1]

Contents

Biography

Sara Mesa was born in Madrid in 1976 and moved with her family to Sevilla as a child, a city where she currently resides. She studied Journalism and Hispanic philology. [2] [3] [4] [5]

Career

She began her narrative work with the publication of the short story collections La sobriedad del galápago (2008) and No es fácil ser verde (2009), and the novels El trepanador de cerebros (2010) and Un incendio invisible (2011), the latter of which won the Málaga Novel Award. She was later a finalist for the Herralde Prize with Four by Four (2013), a novel set in an elite boarding school. Since then, all her work has been published in Spain by Editorial Anagrama, with English translations published by Open Letter in the USA and Peirene in the UK.

Critical and popular recognition grew especially after Scar (2015), a novel that explores a strange long-distance relationship and received RNE’s “Ojo Crítico” Award, followed by the short story collection Bad Handwriting (2016) and the novel Among the Hedges (2018), about the bond between a 14-year-old girl and an older man. [6]

Her best-known novel, Un amor (2020), was named Book of the Year by El País [7] , translated into eighteen languages. This controversial novel about a young woman who decides to move to a small village was a finalist for the European Strega Prize and the Dublin Literary Award, and was adapted into a film by director Isabel Coixet starring Laia Costa.

Subsequently, she published The Family (2022), a novel that received the Premio Cálamo Extraordinario and the Andalucía de la Crítica Award [8] , which narrates a peculiar family story from multiple perspectives based on her own family, as well as Examination (2025), a critique of bureaucracy based on the author’s own experience working in the public administration.

Themes and style

Sara Mesa explores the complexity of everyday relationships from unusual and unsettling angles. Some recurring themes include abuses of power, challenges to authority, the search for freedom in the world of children and adolescents, and the rules and regulations that suppress individuality. Her literary style has been praised for her ability:

> “to create intriguing, disturbing, even terrifying atmospheres without losing touch with the recognizable; probing, poking, delving into incidents, scenarios, and emotions, giving her characters a deep psychological dimension—as chilling as can be” (Manuel Hidalgo, ); “a prose of disconcerting clarity, concise, agile” (Nadal Suau, ).

Other works

She is also the author, along with writer Pablo Martín Sánchez, of Agatha (La uÑa RoTa, 2017), a book in which each author writes their version of a story sketched by Herman Melville, and Perrita Country (Páginas de Espuma, 2021), an illustrated text by artist Pablo Amargo about the strangeness of living with animals.

In 2019, she published Silencio administrativo, an essay on bureaucratic cruelty towards people in extreme poverty based on a real case.

Bibliography

Novels

Short story collections

Poems

Essays

Awards and honors

References

  1. "Sara Mesa". international literature festival berlin. Retrieved 2024-10-28.
  2. "Sara Mesa: «Los escritores a veces subestimamos a nuestros lectores»". Diario Sur. 2 April 2014. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  3. Ayuso, Bárbara (2017-10-16). "Sara Mesa: «Por escribir libros mi opinión no está más cualificada ni es mejor que la de alguien que no escribe» - Jot Down Cultural Magazine" (in Spanish). Retrieved 12 September 2022.
  4. Mesa, Sara (April 2020). "Qué ofende a los televidentes" (PDF). Letras Libres. Retrieved 4 January 2023.
  5. Cedillo, Jaime (16 November 2022). "Sara Mesa en 'Los Martes de El Cultural': "Los escritores de mi generación no somos tan singulares"". El Español. Retrieved 4 January 2023.
  6. "Sara Mesa: "La esencia de la literatura es el conflicto, no la perfección ni la belleza"". elcultural.com. Retrieved 25 September 2018.
  7. Elpais.Com (2020-12-21). "'Un amor', de Sara Mesa, el mejor libro del 2020". El País (in Spanish). Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  8. Aragón, Heraldo de. "Encender una cerilla en la oscuridad: Sara Mesa publica la novela 'La familia'". heraldo.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  9. "Sara Mesa's Novels of Ambiguous, Twisted Power". Literary Hub. 2020-05-11. Retrieved 2020-05-12.

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