19 pulgadas at the European Festival of Debut Novels

Patricia Rodríguez's 19 pulgadas (19 Inches) has been selected as the Spanish representative at the European Festival of Debut Novels 2009, which will be celebrated this spring at the Literaturhaus Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel, Germany.

19 Pulgadas (19 inches), by Patricia Rodríguez

El Aleph – Grup 62 

227 pp. 

19 pulagdas is a surprising debut novel and narrative excercise. As if it were an impressionistic painting, the author gives brushstrokes, suggests characters, sketches landscapes… but never giving a final shape, and manages to depict a reality very close to that of so many young Westerners, in which everything is staggering and there is nothing to grab at, an everyday life in which "we only exist within ourselves, in a place that always remains immobile and from where it is very difficult to escape." 

19 pulgadas recounts the story of a group of mostly young women living in London. From various social and geographical origins, the ties that bind them are ephemeral and selfish. All of them are drugaddicts, some even dealers. Disoriented and dominated by a suffocating apathy, they do not seem to aspire to nothing else than to satisfy their craving for entertainment, fun and pleasure. Among fortuitous encounters and more or less fortunate relationships, they aimlessly wander in a merciless city, so crude and pragmatic as themselves, "a frozen and dark city, a dense and impenetrable environment, in which it is almost impossible to find related or similar life forms". 

‘An author whose voice is worth paying attention to’ Babelia 

‘In her first novel Patricia Rodríguez unfolds the overwhelming void of a world crowded with youngsters’ El País 

Patricia Rodríguez (Valladolid, 1975) is a Bachelor of Arts (University of Middlesex). 

During the last years she’s been a contributor to El País de las tentaciones and Vanidad. 

In 2002 she was one of the founders of the magazine Kilimanjaro, devoted to literature and arts. She’s been living in London since 1995. 

19 pulgadas is her first novel.