Vista Chinesa

Visceral, haunting her fiction is original, startling and sits somewhere between the experimental novels of Eimear McBride and Leila Slimanis more shocking output This is not an easy subject to write about, but Levy has pulled it off. The result is an immediate, powerful novel that should gain her talent wider recognition. -- Francesca Angelini * The Sunday Times * The novel is a searing study of the lasting effects of sexual violence, of the inadequacies of memory, and of the failures of Brazils political and judicial systems. -- ngel Gurra-Quintana * Financial Times * Beautifully paced It is a reckoning and a rebirth; an unsparing look at the consequences of gendered violence, and of the complex history of a city, a land, and a people. -- Catherine Taylor * The Irish Times * An impressive power, which takes us by storm in the first pages as if the book were the forest itself, to accompany with extreme distress, with half-closed eyes, the maximum harshness. -- Julin Fuks, Brazilian writer and literary critic And that is what Vista Chinesa does: surviving a rape is not a shame, but a victory. -- Antonia Pellegrino, award-winning writer and screenwriter The authors focus on a corrupted body is interesting ... A body that in the eyes of the world is just another body, but which the person who inhabits it feels as the standard of the greatest shame. The victim is once again held responsible for the actions of the abuser, a harrowing experience that Salem Levy portrays to perfection. -- Paula Bonet * El Pas * That is the great thing and it is what literature can do to put into words what is unbearable Vista Chinesa is a slim book, a stunning piece of literature, and also an image of society. Intimacy becomes public and the personal becomes political. * Deutschlandfunk * A book full of beauty, depth, and space for reflection. The author does not exploit her story, but in a sense unfolds it to analyse it, and the way she does this, with prudence, economy, and veracity, makes this slim book unusual. * FAZ * Of impressive literary brilliance. * Expresso * A must-read. * Elle Brazil * A powerful story in which the voice of the victim is magnified, and where the focus is on recovery and moving on. Between the descriptions of unspeakable aggression, there are also moments of light, warmth and love. * Tony's Reading List * Full of bravery and insight. -- Eric Karl Anderson * Lonesome Reader * Vista Chinesa is based on the experiences of Levys friend, Joana Jabace. Levy built up the narrative through a series of interviews. Jabace would then read what she had written and comment and, if necessary, Levy would revise. This approach gives a sense of immediacy and the account of the rape and its aftermath is shocking in its intensity. Levys retelling, deftly translated by Alison Entrekin, is also a powerful act of female solidarity. -- Lucy Popescu * Financial Times * [A] work of genius. This is a bold daring book that will change your life. * The Bobosphere * [T]his powerful epistolary novel is narrated by Jlia, an architect reflecting on being torn apart by an intimate violation amid the tumult of the city, which is rife with violent fissures of its own. * The New York Times * [Levy] makes vital fiction out of a womans attempt to process trauma. * Publishers Weekly * Capturing confusion, desperation, anger, and introspection, Vista Chinesa is a detailed, visceral novel in which a woman struggles to heal after surviving a sexual assault. * Foreword Reviews * A powerful and important book. -- Eric Karl Anderson * Lonesome Reader * Praise for The House in Smyrna: Wonderful deceptively simple prose carrying a great power of sorrow and, interestingly, hope. -- Ian McEwan Praise for The House in Smyrna: Levys writing is a joy Her prose is rich, filled w

Tatiana Salem Levy is a writer, essayist, and researcher at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Her first novel, The House in Smyrna (also published by Scribe and translated by Alison Entrekin), won Brazils biggest literary award the So Paulo Prize for Literature for a debut work. She lives in Lisbon, and is a columnist for the newspaper Valor Econmico. Australian translator Alison Entrekin has translated over forty books from the Portuguese, including the classics City of God by Paulo Lins, Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector, and My Sweet Orange Tree by Jos Mauro de Vasconcelos. In 2019, she was awarded the New South Wales Premiers Translation Prize and PEN medallion for the body of her work. Other honours include shortlistings for the 2004 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the 2012 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the 2013 PEN America Translation Prize. She teaches literary translation privately, and occasionally writes about translation (in Portuguese) at: https://www.revistapessoa.com.