Instead, it is a work about tone and style, impressively conveyed by translators Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent from the Catalan original, Terres Mortes. This isn't a novel driven by plot, nor even by characters, although each character is assigned a chapter. The characters are hardened by the realities of the world and the desolation of their surroundings. The world Bendicho paints is brutal and unsentimental. The story revolves around a single family and the murder of one of the sons. The novel is a series of 13 short chapters, each narrated by a different character, a variation on Absalom, Absalom!, but in a postmodern register. But although Faulkner is her lodestar, Bendicho's form here is more contemporary. Dead Lands, her debut, can be read as an homage to Faulkner, a sordid tale with a Southern Gothic sensibility, set in a remote corner of Catalonia. She is currently working on her second novel.Núria Bendicho Giró is a Catalan writer who has spoken about being inspired by the works of William Faulkner.
She has given courses, lectures and workshops on horror literature, female archetypes of evil, and the influence of mystical vision in art. She has published an essay entitled Utopia Is Not an Island (Utopía no es una isla) (Episkaia, 2019) and a novel, Woodworm (Amor de Madre, 2021), which is currently being translated into twelve languages. Layla Martínez is a writer and editor at the independent Levanta Fuego publishing house. Considered by La Vanguardia as the best novel written in Catalan in 2021, Núria Bendicho’s debut was among the finalists for the Llibreter, Òmnium and Finestres Awards. In 2020, she submitted her first novel in Catalan, Terres mortes (Anagrama, 2021) and in Spanish Tierras muertas (Sajalín Editores, 2022), to the Anagrama Book Awards and, although it did not win, the jury nevertheless recommended its publication. An avid reader and admirer of William Faulkner, she has travelled all over the world. Núria Bendicho Giró (Barcelona, 1995) holds a degree in Philosophy. Although seemingly distant, they reveal a world in which we see ourselves terribly reflected their essence is the heart of our everyday life.
The first novels by Núria Bendicho and Layla Martínez, Terres mortes - Dead Lands, in English - and Woodworm (Carcoma), deal with violence and isolation, terrible women, and shadowy places from which escape is not easy. Families that become traps houses you can’t leave. Curses that run in the blood and are passed down from father to son, along with secrets and a yearning for revenge. There are bodies that disappear in remote places and others that are found battered, dead, torn to pieces.
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