Novel. Cuarto Propio, 2000. 96 pages

Cercada is a short novel about an aspect of Chile´s return to democracy, not touched upon by the literary accounts of that era: the relationships between the children of the military and the children of those persecuted for political reasons. Lucía, the daughter of an officer in charge of torture has remained on the political sidelines until she gets involved with two men whose father was killed for his political ideas. A dramatic triangle unfolds in a tense narrative full of suspense, whose surprising denouement is explained by the phrase that begins the book: “We are all masked hunters.”

“An undeniable talent. Consistency and versatility. An implacable eye”. Javier Edwards. El Mercurio.

Published by: Spanish Cuarto Propio.

Novel. Fondo de la Cultura Económica, 2007. 187 pages.

Finalist, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, 2008.

Zoila del Campo and her sister María, known as The Elder, live in a small country town called Ojo Seco (Dry Eye). Here their lives revolve around Zoila’s degenerative disease (diabetes) and María’s job at a fruit company.

It is in this setting that we watch the unfolding of a family drama generated by the protagonist’s condition and the intricate paths that emerge from her rebellion against it, creating situations that give the story surreal, fantastic, open tones.
“The author remains faithful to her radical aesthetic choice in favor of language as expressive material.” Patricio Jara, El Mercurio

“…a powerful text that is a demonstration of her talent as an author with an implacable writing in which the crudest images, a honed, penetrating language, and a bold narrative structure take the reader down a rigorous path full of questions.” Javier Edwards Renard, El Mercurio.

“A novel that speaks with expressive force, evocative quality and live voices. Meruane´s intensely precise writing takes us on an adventure of surprises and revelations.” Julio Ortega

Published by: Spanish worldwide  Fondo de la Cultura Económica

Novel. Planeta Chile, 2000; Oficina de Livro, Portugal, 2001. 200 pages.

Amanda and her friends at a endless late-night card party. An absent mother who is hardly mentioned. And Renata, the girl who can only enter the world of her grandmother through literature, that undefinable place at the boundary of desire. Writing as in a mechanism of convex mirrors allows the narrator to bring back family history through episodes where fact and fiction blur into one another. What really happened in each scene and what has been distorted in recollection? Renata tries to retrieve her biography as she sees herself in another cruel, mysterious girl. But perhaps we are wrong and it is Amanda who is recounting each event. From this side and from the other, the ashes of memory are consumed and questions are raised. And in the longing for a past that is recounted in bits and pieces, and in this meticulously focused past, the registers alternate. Two novels are symmetrically organized into one. A single image refracting the fate of these women linked by eroticism and death. A hazy image for piece of writing that can only be a posthumous exercise.

“…  the very first moment reveals her writing’s striving to avoid the obvious turn of the phrase, to give into the facileness of mere action….It is a pleasure to read a Lina Meruane who is never afraid of words”. Javier Edwards Renard, El Mercurio

Published by: Spanish Planeta/ Portuguese Oficina do Livro

Las Infantas. Lina Meruane. Integrated stories. Planeta 1998. Eterna Cadencia 2010. 176 pages.

In a tone that recalls Perrault’s classic tales for children, Lina Meruane narrates the adventures and misadventures of two princesses who leave the palace as their father is about to use them to back a wager in a game of cards. These ten tale-like episodes intertwine with eleven longer short stories, contemporary in style, to reveal the cruelty and ambivalence of a world, old and new, where childhood is still to be understood.

Fantasies, want, wishes, games shot through from start to finish with an erotic tension that is resolved in a way violating all convention. A moving, as well as disturbing book.

“Lina Meruane’s prose has great literary force: it emerges from the hammer blows of conscience, but also from the ungraspable and from pain”. Roberto Bolaño

“…Lina Meruane stands in the front ranks of our narrative, giving the reader a wink with her unique way of tossing out little verbal darts that make her worthy of the highest praise”. Milton Aguilar

“…Lina Meruane has a calling to the narrative and possesses a powerful language”. Camilo Marks

Published by: Spanish worldwide Eterna Cadencia

Is  one of the most prominent female voices in Chilean contemporary narrative.

Novelist, essayist, and cultural journalist. She is the author of a host of short stories appeared in various anthologies and magazines in Spanish, English, German and French.

She has also published a collection of short stories, Las Infantas (Chile 1998, Argentina 2010), as well as three novels, Póstuma (Chile 2000, Portugal 2001), Cercada (Chile 2000) and Fruta Podrida (Chile & México 2007). The latter won the Best Unpublished Novel Priza awarded by Chile´s National Council of the Culture and the Arts in 2006 and was a finalist for Mexico’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize.

She is the winner of the Anna Seghers Prize, awarded to her by the Akademie der Künste, in Berlin, Germany, 2011.

Meruane has received writing grants from the Arts Development Fund of Chile (1997), the Guggenheim Foundation (2004) and National Endowment for the Arts (2010).

Cultural journalist, columnist and stringer for written media, she currently is the editor of Brutas Editoras, an independent publishing house located in New York City.

Holder of a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from New York University, Meruane currently teaches World and Latin American Literature and Creative Writing at New York University.

Works

Blood in the Eye. Novel, 2012
Las Infantas (The Princesses) Stories, 1998, 2010
Fruta Podrida. (Rotten Fruit) Novel, 2007
Póstuma. (Posthumous) Novel, 200, 2001
Cercada. (Fenced-in) Novel , 2000