Carolina De Robertis

writer

Carolina De Robertis was raised in England, Switzerland, and California by Uruguayan parents. Her fiction, nonfiction, and literary translations have appeared in *ColorLines*, *The Virginia Quarterly Review*, and *The Indiana Review* among others. She is the recipient of a 2008 Hedgebrook Residency for Woman Authoring Change and is the translator of the Chilean novella *Bonsái* by Alejandro Zambra. She lives in Oakland, California, where she is currently at work on her second novel. Her fiction debut, *The Invisible Mountain*, has been called "Marvelous...bold...filled with songs both ecstatic and tragic” (Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban) and “Incantatory… This visionary book beautifully, bravely opens all the old secrets” (Lisa Shea, *Elle*). At once expansive and lush with detail, this debut novel is an intimate exploration of the search for love and authenticity, power and redemption, in the lives of three women, and a penetrating portrait of a small, tenacious nation, Uruguay, shaken in the gales of the twentieth century. On the first day of the century, a small town gathers to witness a miracle and unravel its portents: the mysterious reappearance of a lost infant, Pajarita. Later, as a young woman in the capital city—Montevideo, brimming with growth and promise—Pajarita begins a lineage of independent women. Her daughter Eva, intent on becoming a poet, overcomes an early, shattering betrayal to embark on a most unconventional path toward personal and artistic fulfillment. And Eva’s daughter Salomé, awakening to both her sensuality and political convictions amidst the violent turmoil of the late 1960s, finds herself dangerously attracted to a cadre of urban guerilla rebels. From Perón’s glittering Buenos Aires to the rustic hills of Rio de Janeiro, from the haven of a Montevideo butchershop to US embassy halls, The Invisible Mountain celebrates a nation’s spirit, the will to survive in the most desperate of circumstances, and the fierce and complex connections between mother and daughter.