Novel
A Dead Rose
La rosa muerta
Aurora Cáceres · 1914
Synopsis
Laura, a young, wealthy widow, discovers that she has a serious illness. From Berlin to Paris, she consults several doctors, until Doctor Castel, a gynaecologist, with whom she begins a passionate affair. The novel follows this love, which makes the heroine the mistress of her own sensual life, and the way she insists on keeping intact the image she has of her body, while the two lovers disagree over how to treat the illness.
Context
The novel appeared in Paris in 1914 from Garnier frères, with a preface by Amado Nervo; its subject was thought so scandalous that it was published only in France. The author was then moving in Paris among the modernist writers, and the book combines the ornate prose of that movement with a frankness rare for its time about illness and desire. Thomas Ward reissued it in 2007, and Laura Kanost translated it into English in 2018. The sources do not agree on the illness from which the heroine suffers.
Who it is for
A short novel in Spanish, in a modernist prose laden with images, in which medicine plays a large part.
Prizes and reception
Rediscovered nearly a century after its publication, it is now read as a pioneering feminist work.