• ISBN 978 0 7206 1190 8
• Fiction
• Hardback
• 112pp
• £12.50
• Available

• Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk
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Santiago’s Way

Patricia Laurent

Translated from the Spanish by Geoff Hargreaves

Imagine that all your life you’ve been guided by someone else. Someone who’s steered you away from trouble, taken you across the world, brought you success. He’s called Santiago and he lives in your head. And now he’s turned against you . . .

The unnamed narrator of this début novel blunders through life, never quite getting things right until the arrival of Santiago, a male presence who appears in her mind when she's fourteen. Thanks to Santiago, the naive innocence that has led her into trouble so many times is gone, replaced by a street-smart wisdom that makes her attractive and successful, with a ruthless streak that gets her out of sticky situations time and time again.

But as time goes by, Santiago’s good advice becomes increasingly paranoid. From his operations room inside the narrator’s mind he tortures her with old photos maps and videos: the story of everything that has ever gone wrong in her life. He causes fits and hallucinations, anything to get his way. Suddenly Santiago is dangerous and will stop at nothing to be in control.

A huge hit in Mexico, Santiago’s Way draws on both magic realism and the surreal tradition of Cortázar to tell an exhilarating story that should catapult Patricia Laurent to the front rank of international writers.

‘A short, wild and vital novel that materializes like a polaroid until the full wonderful pain of the narrator’s life is revealed. It’s also one of the most beautifully bruised works of fiction I’ve come across in a long time.’ – Nick Johnstone (A Head Full of Blue)

‘A compelling trip into one woman’s heart of darkness.’ – * * * * Uncut

‘Once you take a trip on its rhythm it will be hard to get off.’ – Skytext

‘A visceral look at madness . . . Laurent’s squelchily descriptive passages of bodily function and dysfunction ground this tale in a solid reality, and make the extremes the possessed narrator is driven to seem even more alarming.’ – * * * * Metro

‘A dazzling experience. I can only compare it to Salvador Dalí’s Mona Lisa with Drawers, the enigmatic image of woman from whom emerge astonishing, shocking and touching images of a woman who is many women.’ – Alfred MacAdam, editor of Review: Latin American Literature and Arts, translator of Fuentes, Cortázar, Carpentier, Pessoa, et al.

‘Patricia Laurent’s prose vibrates with wit and vigour. Santiago’s Way is a jewel of a novel, funny, catastrophic and perverse.’ – Carmen Boullosa, Mexican novelist