Ánima fatua arrives in Spain
We are delighted to welcome the publication this month of a new Spanish-language edition of Ánima fatua by Papelillo Editorial .
The original Spanish text of Ánima fatua has been, until now, extraordinarily difficult to find. It was first published in Cuba by Editorial Letras Cubanas in 2007, with a run of just 2,000 copies – few of which made it beyond the island. Papelillo went to considerable lengths to track one down, and their new edition makes the novel more widely accessible in Spain.
Madrid has proved a significant city for this novel. Last summer, Anna Lidia and translator Robin Munby held an event at Desperate Literature bookshop to mark the publication of the Amaurea English edition – and it was there that the Papelillo team, already committed to publishing the novel in Spanish, first met Anna Lidia in person and saw translator and author presenting the work together. Just yesterday (28 April), Papelillo presented the new edition at the Librería Molar in Madrid, with Robin Munby once again on hand to speak about the novel.
For those coming to Ánima fatua new: it is a coming-of-age story set in the final, turbulent years of the Soviet Union. Its protagonist Alia – like Anna Lidia herself, the child of a Russian mother and a Cuban father – must navigate racial, linguistic and sexual isolation amid the upheaval of perestroika. It is a novel of harsh beauty, dark humour, and emotional intensity; a queer, feminist Cuban narrative unlike almost anything else in contemporary Latin American literature. Our English edition, translated by Robin Munby and winner of an English PEN Translates Award, remains available now. Papelillo have noted warmly that it was Robin who first brought the novel to their attention.
Ánima fatua is far from the only door into Anna Lidia's work. Amaurea has been building a body of her writing in English since 2021, when we published Un Jardín en Miniatura / A Miniature Garden – a bilingual collection of her poetry alongside the photography of Gonzalo Vidal, dealing with love and loss, hybrid identity, and the planting of dreams amid urban decay. Sideways Glance, a collection of vignettes illustrated by Anna Lidia herself, is also available – a mosaic of everyday objects and observations, playing always with form and perception. And our new Spanish edition of Imperio doméstico, one of her most important short-story collections, with an introduction by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, is available now.
Looking ahead, we are currently working with translator Jennifer Shyue on an English translation of Estirpe de papel, a wide-ranging anthology of Anna Lidia's short fiction due for publication in March 2027. We hope to begin sharing some of these stories over the coming months, ahead of publication of the new book.
One story that features in both Imperio doméstico and Estirpe de papel has already found a life beyond the page. 'Las Ventanas' has been made into a short film by director Maryulis Alfonso Yero – and you can watch it below. It captures something of what Anna Lidia's fiction does at its best: the domestic suddenly charged, ordinary life tilting into something stranger and more alive.
Congratulations to Rocío and the whole Papelillo team on the new edition, bringing Ánima fatua to even more Spanish-language readers.