The Rooftop

‘The world is this house’, says Clara while she is trying to protect her beloved ones from the world – yes, that one outside their house walls – which seems to threaten them more and more. Clara entrenches herself with her father and her daughter Flor in a dark apartment that inevitably crumbles on them. The roof becomes their last recess of freedom. A caged bird is the only witness of Clara’s fear and resistance against those she thinks are trying to destroy her.

‘Are threats and pain external or inside our own bodies? Where is violence’s root? What are we afraid of? Is there a possibility of finding a roof where we can finally breathe? What are our umbilical cords?’ Fernanda Trías does not answer these questions – impossible for anyone – about instinct, civilization and taboos; instead she gives them shape and dives deep into them with a grotesque, forceful vision written with agility and a Kafkaesque sense of humour.

Rooftop is a claustrophobic novel about freedom, and also about fear, violence, motherhood and loss.