After the Winter

• Guadalupe Nettel has already established a reputation for herself in this country with Natural Histories and The Body Where I Was Born, and we’re delighted to have yet another exceptional young Mexican writer join our already stellar Latin American list. • After the Winter is the prototypical Coffee House book—deeply sad, ambitious, formally daring, and executed with aplomb. Stores that did well with In the Distance or Faces in the Crowd should have a market for this one as well. • Nettel’s ability to inflect the emotional lives of two closed-off (and, in the case of Claudio, quite cruel) narrators, giving their limitations not just texture, but also the pathos of human frailty, makes the novel a vigorous entrant into conversations about “likeability” and the challenges of creating fiction about fully realized, and deeply flawed, characters. • Nettel’s English is very good, and she will be able to participate in events and interviews, lowering the barriers that sometimes greet works in translation.