Not a River, Selva Almada
Not a River, Selva Almada
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Not a River
A Novel

Author: Selva Almada, Annie McDermott

Narrator: Andrew Joseph Perez

Unabridged: 2 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/11/2025


Synopsis

* SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE *

It's not a river, it's this river.

A hot, motionless afternoon. Enero and El Negro are fishing with Tilo, their dead friend's teenage son. After hours of struggling with a hooked stingray, Enero aims his revolver into the water and shoots it. They hang the ray's enormous corpse from a tree at their campsite and let it go to rot, drawing the attention of some local islanders and igniting a long-simmering fury toward outsiders and their carelessness. It's only the two sisters—the teenage nieces of one of the locals, Aguirre—with their hair black as cowbird feathers and giving off the scent of green grass, who are curious about the trio and invite them to a dance. But the girls are not quite as they seem. As night approaches and tensions rise, Enero and El Negro return to the charged memories of their friend who years ago drowned in this same river.

As uneasy and saturated as a prophetic dream, Not a River is another extraordinary novel by Selva Almada about masculinity, guilt, and irrepressible desire, written in a style that is spare and timeless.

About Selva Almada

Selva Almada was born in Entre Rios, Argentina, in 1973. She has been a finalist for the Rodolfo Walsh and Tigre Juan prizes, and is considered one of the most potent and promising literary voices in Argentina and Latin America.


Reviews

Goodreads review by julieta on August 30, 2020

Me devoré este libro, es una belleza! Selva Almada tiene una manera de llevar el lenguaje al mínimo, casi se sostiene con nada, y lo convierte en música, con pocos trazos hace personajes vívidos y memorables. Solo se me ocurre compararla con mi consentido de la vida, Rulfo. Los paisajes y los pueblo......more

Goodreads review by s.penkevich on March 09, 2025

'He could swear the woods have closed up behind him.' This continues my theory that getting on a boat in literature usually leads to a bummer time. But yet a good read. A consistent cycle of tragedy and trauma churns towards the next generation in Selva Almada’s Not a River, a story that serves as an......more

Goodreads review by Meike on March 27, 2025

Now Shortlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024 This short Argentinian novel thrives when it comes to creating an intense and brooding atmosphere, full of foreboding and mysterious threat. On the surface level, it's a story about two friends, Ene......more

Goodreads review by Paul on March 24, 2025

Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award Shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize - deservedly so and Winner of the Shadow Jury Prize from a group of bloggers and online reviewers of which I am part It’s not a river, it’s this river. Not a River (2024) is Annie McDermott's translation of Se......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on June 29, 2024

The opening of “Not A River” links a river, a fish and a gun. These elements create a contrast between tranquility and violence that flows through the novel much like the eddies of the river that swirl throughout the story.The resultant foreboding aura infuses the novel with a dreamlike quality whil......more