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Winner of the Herralde Novel Prize
A darkly funny coming-of-age novel where Florida’s sun-drenched strangeness meets the dangers of derelict parenting and misplaced devotion
An eccentric Spanish philosophy professor relocates with his two children, a boy and a girl, from Boston to a gated island off the coast of Miami. The kids have come to the US to learn English and spend time with their father after a heated custody battle. But as the professor is embraced by a glittering social scene and his seemingly fun, innocent antics tip into recklessness, the children receive a very different kind of education.
In this lush, sharply observed novel, an unnamed, unreliable narrator remembers her surreal stay on Key Biscayne, where nobody lives unless they have something to hide. As the narrator is gradually drawn into the island’s morally ambiguous world, putting her innocence at risk, she begins to overidentify with her father. She becomes not just witness but also accomplice to his erratic behavior, acquiescing to his efforts to isolate herself and her brother from their concerned mother, whose calls from Spain go unanswered.
The Key Biscayne Affair is a tender, disorienting, and deeply disquieting coming-of-age story disguised as a psychological thriller. Xita Rubert delivers a powerful meditation on childhood and the knotty truths that memory leaves behind.Xita Rubert
Xita Rubert is a Spanish novelist. In 2024, she won the Herralde Novel Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes for the novel in the Spanish language, for The Key Biscayne Affair. Her first novel, My Days with the Kopp Family, was translated into several languages. She is based in New York and holds a PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University.
Julia Sanches
Translated by
Julia Sanches is a literary translator working from Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. Recent translations include Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2024, Boulder by Eva Baltasar, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023, and Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver, for which she won the 2022 PEN translation prize. Born in Brazil, she currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
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