The Wonders
Elena Medel
Mar 2022 · Hachette Audio · Narrated by Rebecca Gibel
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6 hr 37 min
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“The Wonders is a poet’s novel, delicate but strong, impressing its images firmly on the imagination.” —Hilary Mantel
NOW TRANSLATED INTO FIFTEEN LANGUAGES
From award-winning Spanish poet Elena Medel comes a mesmerizing new novel of class, sex, and desire.
Already an international sensation, The Wonders follows Maria and Alicia through the streets of Madrid, from job to job and apartment to apartment, as they search for meaning and stability in a precarious world and unknowingly trace each other’s footfalls across time.
Maria moved to the city in 1969, leaving her daughter with her family but hoping to save enough to take care of her one day. She worked as a housekeeper, then a caregiver, and later a cleaner, and somehow she was always taking care of someone else. Two generations later, in 2018, Alicia was working at the snack shop in Madrid’s Atocha train station when it overflowed with protestors and strikers. All women—and so many of them—protesting what? Alicia wasn’t entirely sure. She couldn’t have known that Maria was among them. Alicia didn’t have time for marches; she was just trying to hang on until the end of her shift, when she might meet someone to take her away for a few hours, to make her forget.
Readers will fall in love with Maria and Alicia, whose stories finally converge in the chaos of the protests, the weight of the years of silence hanging thickly in the air between them. The Wonders brings half a century of the feminist movement to life, and launches an inimitable new voice in fiction. Medel’s lyrical sensibility reveals her roots as a poet, but her fast-paced and expansive storytelling show she’s a novelist ahead of her time.
NOW TRANSLATED INTO FIFTEEN LANGUAGES
From award-winning Spanish poet Elena Medel comes a mesmerizing new novel of class, sex, and desire.
Already an international sensation, The Wonders follows Maria and Alicia through the streets of Madrid, from job to job and apartment to apartment, as they search for meaning and stability in a precarious world and unknowingly trace each other’s footfalls across time.
Maria moved to the city in 1969, leaving her daughter with her family but hoping to save enough to take care of her one day. She worked as a housekeeper, then a caregiver, and later a cleaner, and somehow she was always taking care of someone else. Two generations later, in 2018, Alicia was working at the snack shop in Madrid’s Atocha train station when it overflowed with protestors and strikers. All women—and so many of them—protesting what? Alicia wasn’t entirely sure. She couldn’t have known that Maria was among them. Alicia didn’t have time for marches; she was just trying to hang on until the end of her shift, when she might meet someone to take her away for a few hours, to make her forget.
Readers will fall in love with Maria and Alicia, whose stories finally converge in the chaos of the protests, the weight of the years of silence hanging thickly in the air between them. The Wonders brings half a century of the feminist movement to life, and launches an inimitable new voice in fiction. Medel’s lyrical sensibility reveals her roots as a poet, but her fast-paced and expansive storytelling show she’s a novelist ahead of her time.
“The Wonders is a poet’s novel, delicate but strong, impressing its images firmly on the imagination.” —Hilary Mantel
NOW TRANSLATED INTO FIFTEEN LANGUAGES
From award-winning Spanish poet Elena Medel comes a mesmerizing new novel of class, sex, and desire.
Already an international sensati...
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About the author
Elena Medel (b. 1985) has published a dozen books of poetry, essays and fiction. Her debut novel The Wonders (2020), won of the Francisco Umbral Book of the Year Award 2020, was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2023 and translated into 15 languages. She was shortlisted for The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award 2025, and a writer-in-residence at Cheuse Center, MALBA, Arvo Pärt Centre and Prague UNESCO City of Literature. She is currently based in Madrid
Lizzie Davis is a translator and an editor at Coffee House Press. She has translated Elena Medel’s poetry collection My First Bikini, Juan Cárdenas’s Ornamental (a finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Prize), and work by Valeria Luiselli, Pilar Fraile Amador, and Aura García-Junco. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, Granta, and other publications.
Thomas Bunstead is a writer and translator. His recent translations include The Things We've Seen by Agustín Fernández Mallo, which was a recipient of a PEN Translation Award, and Water Over Stones, a co-translation with Margaret Jull Costa.
Lizzie Davis is a translator and an editor at Coffee House Press. She has translated Elena Medel’s poetry collection My First Bikini, Juan Cárdenas’s Ornamental (a finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Prize), and work by Valeria Luiselli, Pilar Fraile Amador, and Aura García-Junco. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, Granta, and other publications.
Thomas Bunstead is a writer and translator. His recent translations include The Things We've Seen by Agustín Fernández Mallo, which was a recipient of a PEN Translation Award, and Water Over Stones, a co-translation with Margaret Jull Costa.
Elena Medel (b. 1985) has published a dozen books of poetry, essays and fiction. Her debut novel The Wonders (2020), won of the Francisco Umbral Book of the Year Award 2020, was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2023 and translated into 15 languages. She was shortlisted for The Eccles Inst...
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