IF THINGS WERE AS THEY ARE

GABRIELA ESCOBAR DOBRZALOVSKI

A poetic gut punch from a promising young Uruguayan author.

In the literary tradition of terrible mothers, this debut novel occupies a place of honour with the unforgettable character of La Tumbona, the ‘Dozer’:  the all-consuming, voracious mother whose body knocks over, crushes and tramples everything in its path as she roams the house, her tiny kingdom.

After her relationship breaks down, the narrator is forced to return to live in the house of her overbearing mother. Surrounded by guava and grapefruit trees, with the murmur of the waves in the background, her separation from Julia seems somehow more bearable. However, the tense relationship with her bulldozer of a mother and her apathetic brothers soon turn the space into a tragicomic purgatory full of silences, creaks and macabre lyricism.

Winner of the Juan Carlos Onetti Prize 2021

Published in Argentina: Overol, 2023 / Chile: Overol, 2023 / Uruguay: Criatura, 2022  / Spain: Hurtado & Ortega, 2023

Gabriela Escobar Dobrzalovski (Uruguay, 1990) is a writer and a musician. She studied piano and composition with Renée Pietrafesa, has composed music for theatre and audiovisuals, and performed on different stages in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. She participated in the lesbian poetry anthology Devotas and in the Pablo Neruda poetry prize anthology. Published in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, her first novel Si las cosas fuesen como son received Uruguay’s most important literary award in 2021, the Juan Carlos Onetti Prize. It was also shortlisted for the inaugural IESS Primo Romanzo Latinoamericano Award and longlisted for the Finestres Literary Prize in 2023.

For rights information, contact María Juncosa at Casanovas & Lynch Literary Agency: juncosa@casanovaslynch.com

  • “She observes her family and her loneliness as if they were strange insects. The style, oddness and humour of this novel are pure freshness and rebelliousness.”

    Mariana Enriquez

  • “An incantation of words, a rhythmic swaying that drags us, more and more deranged, to a scrubland of fruit trees, to a deserted beach. The more desolate, the more fascinating (...) I feel the need to keep this book to myself, not to reveal anything about it. When something is so precious, there is an urge to hold on to it.”

    Sabina Urraca, in the foreword

  • “A work of exquisite prose.”

    Revista Acromática

  • “I felt like copying this book out into a separate notebook, word by word. It has everything I like: rhythm, precision, an absolutely outrageous vision of the world.”

    Andrea Abre

  • “Through different territorial atmospheres and in an intimate story, a protagonist is constructed who, searching for herself, ties and unties a long family genealogy made up of silences, ghosts and weak souls, settling accounts with a brutally devastating mother. The uniqueness of the protagonist is shaped by the weight of history, the ironies of fate, the dreamlike and the delirious, the failed romantic relationships, the need to save herself and others from the past and its wounds. The reflective subtlety, the powerful images and, at times, a very fine dark humour, give the novel an unusual tone, at once stark and poetic.”

    Jury of the Juan Carlos Onetti Prize

  • “With writing that is at once a poetic blaze, flowers and gasoline, and at the same time pure orality, a story that someone tells you in your ear in a moonlit courtyard, Gabriela Escobar Dobrzalovski's prose is highly original. Evocative, sparkling, with a microscopic gaze that cuts through you.”

    Andrea Núñez, Literaturbia

  • “One of the best books of the year.”

    Rosario Villajos

  • “A short, fragmented, intense text, full of powerful images and harsh reflections. It is a novel that mixes fears with desires, that intertwines the tyranny of blood and the fantasy of the imagination to tell us the story of a dysfunctional family, but, above all, the uneasy relationship between a mother and a daughter who hate each other but are attracted to each other like magnetic poles.”

    José de Montfort, Coolt

Next

You're Very Quiet Today