How to identify the narrative that sustains our identity or that of others? How to escape from these annihilating or necessary fictions? The idea of identity as an illusion runs through this powerful collection of short stories by Marina Closs, sometimes as a suffocating knot and sometimes as a sustaining moment. Pombero‘s characters seem to shape their sense of self as they speak: the elf of the forests, the married Indian girl, the sexuality of the healing Japanese masseuse, Rosita-Alfonso with her hairstyles and her fear of a cancer that seems to be contagious, María das Luces and her impossibility to conceive… these characters wander in the most mobile and fragile form of existence, which is the word itself. They create a half-blood cultural tapestry that defines a different way of saying and thinking.

Pombero was a finalist of the Ribera del Duero Award 2022

“The writing of Marina Closs trembles, sweats, explodes: she is already one of my favourite writers.” – Mónica Ojeda

“Marina Closs’ short stories are beautiful, […] poetic, they are like a spell as they combine a primitive, original vision with a sophisticated perspective of literature. The stories in Pombero illuminate the untouched by the light with poetic vigour and legendary mystery. Ancient and ultra-contemporary, words take literature out of its easy chair. When we read a lot, sometimes we forget, but Marina Closs is unforgettable” – Marta Sanz, Babelia/El País

“In the last few years literature from Argentina introduced great writers such as Selva Almada, Samanta Schweblin or Arian Harwicz. To this list I now add the name of Marina Closs.” – Rebeca García Nieto, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos

“An amazing literary universe where we can get lost to find ourselves. A set of impressive stories that leave us absorbed and immersed in an atmosphere that is made up of clouds, of magic, and language. The poetic is always revolutionary, and this is what this book is, in its entirety. A masterpiece.” – Bestia lectora

“Astonishment and wonder.” – Revista Ñ, Clarín

“Pombero is a rebellion. It is rage and beauty. It is the need, the impulse to write […]. Closs’ style is ungovernable. Her language is alive and burns. She plays with the language skinning it, as in a ritual.” La Lectura 

“[Pombero] is a collection of short stories that confirms the ability of Closs’ writing to leap over the limits and patterns of what can be said, of what can be expressed.” Mercurio

“These amazing stories display a very powerful writing that strives to understand the inaccessible.” El Periódico

“Marina Closs has just created a space for a group of beings with an air of mythology and earthly depth” Agustina del Vigo, Page 12

“They are powerfully rhythmic, recited texts that, through repetition, transform realities or make real identities that did not exist before.” Telam

 

160 pages – Original language: Worldwide Spanish (Páginas de Espuma, 2023)