Elena Knows

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022

Elena Knows is a heartbreaking literary novel about Elena, who stubbornly defies her medical condition to meet justice and wants to find out who is responsible for the death of her only daughter, Rita.

A masterfully written blend of literary and crime novel. In addition to the crime story, and in the center of it, there’s determination, illness, the relationship between daughter and mother, and maternal love.

 

Goodreads

 

Excerpt from the Book:

 

The trick is to lift up the right foot, just a few centimetres off the floor, move it forward through the air, just enough to get past the left foot, and when it gets as far as it can go, lower it. That’s all it is, Elena thinks. But she thinks this, and even though her brain orders the movement, her right foot doesn’t move. It does not lift up. It does not move forward through the air. It does not lower back down. It’s so simple. But it doesn’t do it. So Elena sits and waits. In her kitchen. She has to take the train into the city at ten o’clock; the one after that, the eleven o’clock, won’t do because she took the pill at nine, so she thinks, and she knows, that she has to take the ten o’clock train, right after the medication has managed to persuade her body to follow her brain’s orders. Soon.

 

Details:

• author: Claudia Piñeiro
• full title: Elena Knows
• genre: literary fiction
  
• format/type: bookfiction
• country: Argentina
• topics: #parkinsons, #illness, #motherdaughter, #family
  
• publisher: Charco Press
  
• publish date: July 1, 2021
• pages: 143
  

My Rating of the Book:

• content: 💙💙💙💙💙

 

Prizes

• Premio Pepe Carvalho (2019)
• International Booker Prize Nominee for Shortlist (2022)
• Barbellion Prize Nominee for Longlist (2021)

 

About the Author: 

Claudia Piñeiro is an Argentine novelist and screenwriter, best known for her crime and mystery novels, most of which became best sellers in Argentina. She was born in Burzaco, Buenos Aires province.

Other Works by this Author:

• A Little Luck