Undiscovered
As seen:
By Gabriela Wiener, and and, Julia Sanches
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‘An intimate story from the family archive, a story that is also the infamous history of our continent’ Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive
‘Powerful and searing’ Samanta Schweblin, author of Fever Dream
A provocative autobiographical novel that reckons with the legacy of colonialism through one woman’s family ties to both colonised and coloniser
In an ethnographic museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener is confronted with her unusual inheritance. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artefacts, the spoils of European colonial plunder. As she peers through the glass, she sees sculptures of Indigenous faces that resemble her own – but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener.
In the wake of her father’s death, Gabriela begins delving into all she has inherited from her paternal line. From the brutal trail of racism and theft that Charles left behind to revelations of her father’s infidelity, she traces a legacy of abandonment, jealousy and colonial violence, in turn reframing her own struggles with desire, love and race. Seeking relief from these personal and historical wounds, Gabriela turns to the body and desire as sources of both constraint and potential freedom.
Blending personal, historical and fictional writing, Undiscovered tells of a search for identity beyond the old stories of patriarchs and plunder. Subversive, intimate and fiercely irreverent, it builds to a powerful call for decolonization.
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Auto fiction isn't really my thing anyway and this seems to have very little fiction. A young woman discussing herself, her sex life, her maybe-ancestors etc. Why does she assume anyone else would be interested? But what was interesting was her discussion on colonialism and racism. She's Peruvian living in Spain and relates it all to personal experience and she does do that well.
