Mientras dormías, cantabas
N. Pino Luna

FICTION | 2022 | 192 pages

‘Whilst You Slept, You Sang’ is a novel set over a single New Year’s Eve in a block of social housing in Chile. Marta, a 24-year-old woman, struggles with a panic attack whilst her family celebrates. But this is not an ordinary party: it is the anniversary of the death of Leonor, her sister—whom everyone called ‘Auntie’—who died seven years ago at the same age Marta is now.

Through the cumbias playing on the radio, the awkward hugs, the veiled arguments and the dancing that suspends everything, the novel unravels a story of covert adoption, police rape under the dictatorship, unrequited lesbian love, maternal abandonment and congenital illnesses. But it is also a story of tenderness, of mentholated massage rituals, of teachers who choose books for fear of causing harm, and of a mother and grandmother, Clara, who reinvents family ties in order to survive.

With fragmentary, lyrical and rhythmic prose—which mimics the sway of a cumbia—the novel explores how grief, guilt and love are inherited, danced and, at times, sung out of tune.

RIGHTS: spanish (spain) YEGUA DE TROYA / PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE | spanish (chile) LA MUJER ROTA

“A novel that whispers and dances at the same time. The author has written a beautiful book about pain and the possibility of settling that can be read as an extremely personal declaration of love for literature.”
— Alejandro Zambra
“The Chilean author’s award-winning, cinematic novel masterfully recounts a poignant, healing catharsis from the pain of loss through memories, songs and secrets.”
— Carlos Zanón, Babelia, El País