Winner of the Llibreter prize chosen by booksellers
Longlisted for 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
Permafrost’s no-bullshit lesbian narrator is an uninhibited lover and a wickedly funny observer of modern life. Desperate to get out of Barcelona, she goes to Brussels, ‘because a city whose symbol is a little boy pissing was a city I knew I would like’; as an au pair in Scotland, she develops a hatred of the colour green. And everywhere she goes, she tries to break out of the roles set for her by family and society, chasing escape wherever it can be found: love affairs, travel, thoughts of suicide.
Full of powerful, physical imagery, this prize-winning debut novel by acclaimed Catalan poet Eva Baltasar was a word-of-mouth hit in its own language. It is a breathtakingly forthright call for women’s freedom to embrace both pleasure and solitude, and speaks boldly of the body, of sex, and of the self.
New York Times
‘The experience of reading Permafrost is utterly unforgettable.’
Amina Cain
Reading Eva Baltasar's Permafrost is like having a rug continuously pulled out from under you until finally the rug disappears. How can a novel that orbits suicide be so surprising, so intensely liberating and funny, and at the same time, so full of grief? That is its genius.
Catherine Lacey
‘Permafrost is a discomfiting book about a sensual intoxication with life that just barely contains the desire for it to be over and done with forever. Like a perfect song, Eva Baltasar’s words, as translated by Julia Sanches, have a sheen and inevitability that I won’t soon forget. It held me in a trance.’
Le Monde
‘A magma of sensations, doubts and aspirations. A trove of treasures. The piquancy of this novel, a surprise word-of-mouth hit in Spain, comes from the gap between the fantasies projected onto the narrator by the women around her––who see in her a free and contented woman––and the suffocating feeling constricting her. ’
La Vanguardia
‘Eva Baltasar debuts as a novelist with a high voltage book about the self, the body, sex and the family. One of the books of the year.’
Time Out
‘The discovery of the year’
ABC
‘Breathtaking, intense, poetic.’
El Mundo/El Cultural
‘A cold but fiery lucidity, admirable, in its approach to detail.’
Babelia/El País
‘Baltasar handles feelings as radioactive material, that is, as something that kills and illuminates us.’
La Vanguardia
‘Baltasar describes how you didn't think it could be done. It surpasses everything. One of the best books of the year’
El Periódico
‘Without doubt, one of the most memorable protagonists of contemporary Catalan narrative.’
La Repubblica
‘A Catalan Dorothy Parker. Ironic, implacable.’
La Stampa
‘An investigation of the body as an instrument for measuring pain and desire. A besieged, solemn and majestically painful body, which ideally embraces all of humanity.’
El País
‘A new voice. Courageous and audacious. Baltasar's style is astonishing.’
Clarín
‘Baltasar’s is a strong debut.’
Nuvol.com
‘Intimate, beautiful, ironic and surprising.’
Eva Piquer
Ara Llegim
‘An electrifying writing and a personal, raw and lucid gaze. It convinces.’
Luna Miguel
Playground
‘Read until you come or read until you cry. That's what happens when you encounter the frozen casing of Permafrost. Ice, not because it is cold, but because it cracks.’
Jenn Díaz
El Periódico
‘Eva Baltasar performs an exercise in honesty with this protagonist, who does not beat about the bush and talks – talks to us – without half measures, without filters, without conventions. Perhaps that honesty has been responsible for the success of the novel, which has recently won the Premi Llibreter. This is the power of a voice without scorn, without regrets, that narrates its own introspection.’
Julià Guillamon
Culturas
‘Permafrost by Eva Baltasar is one of the revelatory books of this season . . . I had never read a book in Catalan about sex, seen from the perspective of a woman, such as Permafrost.’
Jordi Benavente
La lanza
‘I came to Permafrost because it was recommended by everyone. And now I have devoured it, I also recommend it to you.’
