Leaving Tabasco

by Carmen Boullosa

Translated from the Spanish by Geoff Hargreaves

Nominated by:

• Biblioteca Daniel Cosio Villegas, Mexico City, Mexico
  
• Bibliotecas Publicas Municipales, Madrid, Spain
  
• New York Public Library, New York, USA
  

Raised by her mother and grandmother, in an all-female home with not enough affection but more than enough stories to go round, Delmira Ulloa comes into adulthood with a wicked sense of humour and a delightful imagination. Agustini is not an ordinary village - Delmira grows up in a world where she sees her grandmother floating above the bed when she sleeps; where her grandmother remembers a time when stones turned into water; where during the dry season one can purchase torrential rains at a travelling fair; where her family's elderly serving woman develops stigmata, then disappears completely. As Delmira becomes a woman she will search for the missing stranger who fathered her and in choosing her own allegiances make a choice that will force her to leave home forever.
Leaving Tabasco brims with the spirit of its irrepressible heroine and the magic of her grandmother's nightly bedtime stories.