Anima Fatua | Anna Lidia Vega Serova
The first English translation of the controversial semi-autobiographical novel
In Anima Fatua, Anna Lidia Vega Serova draws on her own experiences of growing up in the late Soviet Union to craft a deeply unsettling coming-of-age novel. In the wake of her parents’ divorce, Alia the novel’s beguiling protagonist, is forced to negotiate her linguistic, racial and sexual otherness amid the maelstrom of perestroika. Despite the many horrors to which she is exposed, largely at the hands of the novel’s grim menagerie of male characters, Alia exerts her own agency at every turn. More antihero than tragic victim, Alia responds in kind to the cruelty around her, she confounds and enthralls as she leads us on a harrowing journey through a country on the brink.
Anima Fatua will appeal to readers of Margarita García Robayo, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya or Sayaka Murata looking to delve back into a world of complex, charismatic women. This novel comes in the wake of short stories published in Words Without Borders, Guernica, American Chordata, Two Lines and New England Review.
Originally published in Spanish to much acclaim in 2008, it has now been translated for the first time into English by Robin Munby – a translation that has been awarded an English PEN Translates prize. This is a story full of emotional intensity and dark humour.
Publication date: 12 June 2025
Anima Fatua has been featured in Latin American Literature Today.
“An evocative portrait of displacement and desire, tracing a life shaped by exile, revolution, and emotional rupture.” (Leo Boix, Morning Star)
“As a translator, I am always drawn to books that feel as though they could never have been written in English. This book feels like it could have been written by no one else. It is not just the dizzying story itself, which lurches from fairytale to nightmare in the blink of an eye, but Anna Lidia’s twisted, playful approach to language. Anima Fatua is a book that resists interpretation at every turn.” Translator Robin Munby.
“A journey to the Soviet Union, around it, and back to Cuba in the 1980s that is fraught with disunion and sorrow, but also joy and desire.” (Jacqueline Loss, Dreaming in Russian)
“Vega Serova’s fiction reads like a gallery of anti-heroines.” (Mabel Cuesta, Cambridge History of Cuban Literature)
“Her writing is seductive. Sometimes it provokes tenderness and sometimes pain. A novel of harsh beauty, it gets under your skin.” (Karla Suárez, author of Havana Year Zero)
Anima Fatua | Anna Lidia Vega Serova
The first English translation of the controversial semi-autobiographical novel
In Anima Fatua, Anna Lidia Vega Serova draws on her own experiences of growing up in the late Soviet Union to craft a deeply unsettling coming-of-age novel. In the wake of her parents’ divorce, Alia the novel’s beguiling protagonist, is forced to negotiate her linguistic, racial and sexual otherness amid the maelstrom of perestroika. Despite the many horrors to which she is exposed, largely at the hands of the novel’s grim menagerie of male characters, Alia exerts her own agency at every turn. More antihero than tragic victim, Alia responds in kind to the cruelty around her, she confounds and enthralls as she leads us on a harrowing journey through a country on the brink.
Anima Fatua will appeal to readers of Margarita García Robayo, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya or Sayaka Murata looking to delve back into a world of complex, charismatic women. This novel comes in the wake of short stories published in Words Without Borders, Guernica, American Chordata, Two Lines and New England Review.
Originally published in Spanish to much acclaim in 2008, it has now been translated for the first time into English by Robin Munby – a translation that has been awarded an English PEN Translates prize. This is a story full of emotional intensity and dark humour.
Publication date: 12 June 2025
Anima Fatua has been featured in Latin American Literature Today.
“An evocative portrait of displacement and desire, tracing a life shaped by exile, revolution, and emotional rupture.” (Leo Boix, Morning Star)
“As a translator, I am always drawn to books that feel as though they could never have been written in English. This book feels like it could have been written by no one else. It is not just the dizzying story itself, which lurches from fairytale to nightmare in the blink of an eye, but Anna Lidia’s twisted, playful approach to language. Anima Fatua is a book that resists interpretation at every turn.” Translator Robin Munby.
“A journey to the Soviet Union, around it, and back to Cuba in the 1980s that is fraught with disunion and sorrow, but also joy and desire.” (Jacqueline Loss, Dreaming in Russian)
“Vega Serova’s fiction reads like a gallery of anti-heroines.” (Mabel Cuesta, Cambridge History of Cuban Literature)
“Her writing is seductive. Sometimes it provokes tenderness and sometimes pain. A novel of harsh beauty, it gets under your skin.” (Karla Suárez, author of Havana Year Zero)