Mientras dormías, cantabas
N. Pino Luna

FICTION | 2022 | 192 pages

In an apartment on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, New Year's Eve becomes stranger than ever. Marta observes her sister's corpse, searching for revelations. It's unclear whether the cumbia music makes the autopsy more or less painful throughout the course of those days, but dancing follows the embraces, and intimacy blossoms like a sore in the mouth.

In this carefully crafted and profound novel, the grammar of dance and affection unfolds amidst secrets when the characters are forced to inhabit an inhospitable territory; the intimate diary of a family that could be our own. In a single, continuous shot, with eccentric and vigorous prose, we see bodies drawn together in the spaces of absence and in the vague and mutual understanding of pain. Clothed in vulnerability for the occasion, the characters in this story manage to compose a melody with emptiness and silence, with shrapnel and caresses, with sleep and blackouts. And what vibrates is the faint hope of what will not come.

Award-winning in its country and acclaimed by critics and authors, Mientras dormías, cantabas is a dark party or a carnival wake that accompanies us, taking one step forward and one step back, on the dance floor of loss.

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