Publishers Weekly
07/17/2023
Peruvian writer Wiener (Sexographies) plumbs the depths of her family history while exploring the legacy of colonialism in this incisive work of autofiction. The narrator, a self-described “chola” or dark-skinned Peruvian woman named Gabriela, lives in Spain in a queer polyamorous triad, and is proud of her nontraditional life. Then her beloved father dies, and she returns to Peru in mourning. There, she inquires into the lives of patriarchal figures further back in her family’s history, including her great-great-grandfather, the Austrian-French explorer Charles Wiener, who brought Indigenous artifacts back to Europe for display. As she researches her ancestor, she also learns about her father and his infidelities. Weiner shifts seamlessly from the intimate to the historical, often with humor (on Charles Wiener’s writings on Bolivia and Peru: “He is... without a doubt, the creator of the story’s hero: himself. Had he lived in the twenty-first century, he might have been accused of the worst possible crime an author can be accused of today: writing autofiction”). Weiner’s slim and affecting novel will whet readers’ appetites for more. Agent: María Lynch, Casanovas & Lynch. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"Gabriela Wiener is a completely unique talent: a graceful storyteller, an acute observer of human vanity, a writer of bold, often delightful insights. Every book she writes is an event not to be missed." — Daniel Alarcón, PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist and Author of At Night We Walk in Circles
“Undiscovered has an appealingly raw, confessional tone, but its prose is highly polished. Sanches' translation does not have an extraneous word. It is also—fittingly, for a book about post-colonial history—committed to retaining the original text's Peruvian-ness. . . . Gabriela, who calls herself ‘the most Indian of the Wieners,’ cannot forget that: In Sanches' exceptional translation, neither can anyone else.” — NPR
"Gabriela Wiener's ease and grace allow her in Undiscovered to explore family, desire, racism, colonialism and being a migrant both tenderly and crudely, vulnerable yet resolute like her beautiful prose." — Mariana Enríquez, Author of Our Share of Night
"Reading Undiscovered, I wondered what so captivated me about this novel. Was it Gabriela's innate ability to plunder all sorts of convention? Her persistent exploration of our deepest despairs–the weight and falsehoods of the stories and imperatives we inherit? All this, but Undiscovered is also spurred on by a yet more profound and radical strength: the spirit of fury. Powerful and searing, this novel snaps, bucks, heals, and snaps again..." — Samanta Schweblin, Author of the National Book Award winning Seven Empty Houses
"[An] incisive work of autofiction . . . shift[ing] seamlessly from the historical to the intimate, often with humor. . . . Wiener's slim and affecting novel will whet readers' appetites for more." — Publishers Weekly
"To trail Gabriela Wiener, to follow in her footsteps, dreaming of reaching her, is one of the few luxuries we have left." — Alejandro Zambra, Author of Chilean Poet and Ways of Going Home
“Even as it probes the author’s own family legacy, Undiscovered reminds readers of the importance of confronting the white-savior myths that form the basis of so much of what we call ‘history.’” — BookPage
"A compelling search for identity that explores the complicated relationship between the person you want to be and the stories of the past that might have made you. This is an exploration of colonialism’s surprising effects on a writer investigating her antecedents and ancestors starting from a display case of Peruvian artefacts in Paris and ending in a story of family, love and desire." — Jury of the 2024 International Booker Prize
"Powerful, genre-transcending... A quiet, lucid triumph" — Irish Times
"Can you imagine a book starring the search for a European ancestor who was a Peruvian ceramic thief, of a bleached and bastard great-grandfather, of polyamory and its deceits, of the grief for a father’s loss, of the heterosexual family and their shameful secrets, of the anticolonialist sex workshops. . . ? Step by step, what seems to be a random encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissection table becomes the best book that I’ve read about filiation and love in the contemporary postcolonial condition. Gabriela Wiener has created queer and decolonial psychogenealogy!" — Paul B. Preciado
"An investigative odyssey prompted by a fresh wound . . . where the intimate drama of a family is subsumed into the grander cosmos of colonialism. . . . A beautiful artifact." — Dolores Reyes, Author of Eartheater
“Wiener uses as raw material the arrogance of Eurocentric violence to create radically beautiful and necessary narrations for the antiracist fights.” — Daniela Ortiz
"A collective autobiography in the key of decolonization; a reckoning unafraid to interrogate itself . . . that inspires awe and shudders." — Cristina Rivera Garza
"A rollicking decolonial fact-fiction remix of ... [Wiener's family] histories, the life of her great-great-great grandfather, the explorer Charles Wiener, and how all this time plays out in her own body, and her current life, and polyamorous household in Madrid." — Electric Literature