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LOS ESCORPIONES

Sara Barquinero

Los Escorpiones is a gripping, darkly poetic novel that delves into the lives of complex characters trapped in the tumult of their own emotional and existential struggles. With masterful prose, Barquinero explores themes of alienation, identity, and the pursuit of meaning in a fractured world, which has granted her the status of an author of her whole generation and one of the highlights this year.
The young novelist Sara Barquineropraised by Carlos Zanón, Nuria Labari, Andrés Barba, Elvira Navarro, Elizabeth Duval, and Luna Miguel establishes herself as a major literary force with an astonishing work of fiction.
Los escorpiones is a novel of novels: a titanic and mysterious narrative piece. The protagonists, Sara and Thomas, become wrapped up in a conspiracy theory driven by political and economic forces that aim to exert control through hypnosis and subliminal messaging in books, video games, and music in order to induce suicide. Both characters navigate emotional turmoil as an indescribable and powerful bond begins to form between them, and they ultimately choose to investigate this cult, which shares a name with one of the few animal species that would rather kill itself than endure pain.


Sara Barquinero (Zaragoza, 1994) holds a PhD in Philosophy. In 2018 she was awarded a creative grant at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, where she wrote her nouvelle Terminal (Milenio, 2020).

In 2016 she received the Universal Values Essay Prize from the Unir Foundation, the Virginia Woolf Prize for short stories in English in 2017, the IAJ Prize for artistic and technological creation in the literature category in 2018, the Voces Nuevas Prize for poetry from Editorial Torremozas in 2019 and has been considered a revelation author of Spanish literature in 2021 by Woman magazine. After Estaré sola y sin fiesta (Lumen, 2021), in 2024 she published Los Escorpiones (Lumen, 2024) a visionary novel that became one of the best novels of the year.
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Published 2024-02-22 by LUMEN

Comments

It is one of those works that justifies why we continue reading novels.

Its characters sink into hell narrated with a mastery befitting a gifted writer.

Los Escorpiones is, in short, a masterful and monumental hyper-novel that has to become a phenomenon: it has everything to do so, but, above and beyond the magnetic plot, so successful, what convinces is its extraordinary literary greatness.

Barquinero has written a colossal novel.

The novel that has generated the most anticipation in the publishing world in recent months. [...] An ambitious literary work that leaves a lasting impression, with its own distinct voiceintelligent and philosophicalthat aims to go beyond what's typically expected from its genre.

The first contender for book of the year in 2024.

One of the best novels to be published so far in the 21st century. [...] And of course, the fact that the author has written such an immensely ambitious and courageous (and, to a large extent, successful) book at her age only makes it even more astonishing.

A reading experience that obsesses, unsettles and drags the reader to the end.

One of the most ambitious novels in contemporary Spanish literature.

An astonishing visual and artistic mastery, with a freedom of style, techniques, and methods that elevate the book into a genius experiment by a writer skilled in depicting broken intimacies. [...] A brilliant, intriguing, and convincingly eccentric mind.

The most ambitious Spanish novel in years. Barquinero's anhedonia and escapism belong alongside the greatest moments in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest or the novels of Don DeLillo, with echoes of Roberto Bolaño's 2666 and Ottessa Moshfegh, Mariana Enríquez, and Michel Houellebecq.

Somewhere between David Foster Wallace and the fantastic horror of Mariana Enriquez, the philosopher and writer weaves a compelling story, grappling with the same issues that resonate with her readers.

The promising expectations are amply confirmed with this ambitious novel in the line of the well assimilated influence of Foster Wallace, Roberto Bolaño or Michel Houellebecq.

The novel of a generation.

An unavoidable success. Barquinero's maturity is astounding. I believe in this book so much, I can't help but applaud. [...] Impossible to ignore.

A page-turner that blends thriller and horror, paying tribute to authors like Mariana Enriquez and Stephen King. [...] Sara Mesa effortlessly links her own name to the Dan Brown-esque bestseller without breaking a sweat, all while writing with feverish, uninhibited flair. [...] And if anyone were to suggest a connection to Cervantes, I wouldn't argue with them.