The Flavor of Grief: UMAMI
NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday features an under-the-radar debut novel by a Mexican author, published in English by an indie British press, Umami by Laia Jufresa, translated by Sophie Hughes (Perseus/Oneworld Publications, dist. in the U.S. by Perseus/PGW; OverDrive Sample).
Host Scott Simon lyrically introduces the book as set in a Mexico City neighborhood where “The residents … each have their own stories told in different times, different stories that, in time, reveal common threads of love, loss, regret, recovery, mystery, loneliness and an undefinable richness.”
All the characters are struggling with some level of loss and Jufresa says she wanted to write a book about “grief during a [specific] period of time because I also wanted to write about the end of grief … this kind of grief where you’re already coming out.”
About the process of translation Jufresa says that “It’s such a treat to have someone translating your work because no one ever will read your work as closely as a translator does … you have the fantasy that you will have readers like this, I think, that pick up all the details.”
Jufreza was named as one of the most outstanding young writers in Mexico as part of the 2015 project México20. Her novel was listed as one of the titles on The Millions “Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview” and The Rumpus called it “Dynamic and delicate.”