First published 2022
Julio and Emilia meet as literature students in Chile, both hungry for truth in the pages of great books. They pretend to have read novels they haven't touched, discussing them with the confidence of young intellectuals. Their relationship becomes its own kind of fiction as they lie to each other and reinvent themselves repeatedly. They try on new identities like clothes, watching their own love story unfold as if observing characters in the novels they claim to know. Through their twenties, they circle each other in an endless dance of coming together and pulling apart. Julio and Emilia analyze their connection with the same intensity they bring to literature, turning their romance into both subject and object of study. Their bond weaves through years of separation and reunion, each phase revealing new layers of who they are and who they pretend to be. The story examines how love, art, and memory intersect in the lives of two people who cannot decide whether they are living their story or simply reading it.
Genres: romance, literary-fiction, contemporary, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Chile
Period: 20th-century
76 pages · Paperback · Fitzcarraldo Editions