desirelines books

This month we’re highlighting the Mexican writer Elena Garro.

Described by Jorge Luis Borges as the “Tolstoy of Mexico” and by César Aira as “the greatest novelist of the twentieth century,” Garro somehow remained a writer unknown to us until now.

Thankfully, Two Lines Press has helped fill that void, inviting readers into Garro’s incredible, tragic, beautiful, and endlessly fascinating life and work.

The Week of Colors is Garro’s semina short story collection, blending myth, parallel timeframes, childhood terrors, and surreal elements to explore violence, memory, class divides, and the patriarchal horrors of Mexico.

And The Queen of Swords, Jazmina Barrera’s deeply personal and absolutely brilliant biography of Garro, is equally mesmerizing. Barrera’s fascination with her subject becomes completely contagious, within just a few chapters, the reader is pulled deeply into the brilliance, contradictions, and controversies of Elena Garro’s life and work.