Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana Prize (Finalist)"García Robayo writes with caustic insight, brittle humour and a fair whack of cynicism (...) Holiday Heart is brilliant." —The Guardian"Understated, lyrical, and delivers its insights by means of acute observation. (5 stars)" —The Arts Desk"Cunningly well achieved." —Irish Times"Holiday Heart is a poignant and searing story of love ending." —Gutter Magazine"Coombe’s translation brilliantly captures the bite in García Robayo’s humour." —iNews"One of Colombia’s greatest living writers." —The Monthly Booking"Brilliantly dramatises the disjunction between an idealized picture of life like sitting on a sunny beach and the reality of that life like getting sand caught in your teeth." —Lonesome ReaderBest Fiction Books of 2017 —New York Times (Español)"Darkly funny throughout, this examination of two lives will stay with you long after you read the final words and lay the book down." —Lunate"Every sentence in the book seems to be written with a scalpel infused with acid. " —Morning Star"Acute, provocative, concise and raw." —Translating Women"An incredibly insightful portrayal of a disintegrating marriage...provides a sharp-eyed view of estrangement and personal identity." —Book Riot"Frightening, alluring, and inescapable." —Books and Bao**********Praise for Margarita García RobayoCasa de las Américas Prize (Winner)Society of Authors Valle-Inclán Prize (Shortlist)"García Robayo’s prose bristles with restrained energy and a wry humour which captures the disaffection of her characters." —The Times Literary Supplement"[Fish Soup] is a gorgeous, blackly humorous look into the lives of Colombians struggling to find their place in society, both at home and abroad." —Publishers Weekly, starred review"A remarkable genre-bending effort." —The Guardian"The tackiness of the Caribbean coast and its discontents are marvellously rendered." —The Times Literary Supplement"If you’re a fan of Ottessa Moshfegh or Melissa Broder, then this is for you." —The Guardian"An evocative collection that conveys the potency of desire in even the most ordinary lives." —Kirkus"García Robayo is building one of the most solid and interesting oeuvres in Latin American literature."" —Juan Cárdenas , author of ORNAMENTAL"Her stories combine the atmosphere of Desperate Housewives, Hemingway’s iceberg theory and a memorable, bittersweet ending."" —Jorge Carrión , author of BOOKSHOPS"Margarita shows sharp insight into contemporary life. Her voice speaks with surreptitious irony and sophisticated psychological perception. She is the creator of an exceptional poetics of displacement."" —Juan Villoro , author of THE WITNESS"There are very few writers who can challenge expectations the way Margarita García Robayo does. Margarita is simply one of the best of the new generation that respects, yet no longer identifies with, the Latin American Boom."" —Mariana Enríquez , author of THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE"This is a text written from within the belly of the beast. (…) One of the most essential books of the year." —Asymptote"García Robayo’s prose is concise and startling, her voice versatile and capable of packing a serious punch." —LA Review of Books"One of the most potent figures of contemporary Latin American literature." —ABC Cultural"Full of everyday details that reveal the most vulnerable aspects of feminine subjectivity." —La Nación**********

Lucía and the children are lying on the sand.Tomás is slotted into one side of her body and Rosa into the other. Like two soft organs, easily removed. They smell of salt and of grilled corn.Tomás is complaining about the book Lucía bought him.‘Benjamin goes for a ride in his spaceship and runs out of fuel. He makes an emergency landing on an asteroid and sits down to wait...’‘I hate it,’ he says.‘Why?’ Lucía asks.He shrugs and furrows his brow.This is a tic he has; he does it several times a day.A tiny but vital movement, the way the diaphragm expands and contracts with every breath.The fireworks are already over. Only the Russians are left, their brash voices carrying in the air as they try to salvage some rockets which, instead of exploding, belch thick black smoke. A while ago, the children started coughing and Lucía moved them to the next stretch of beach along, where they found a small mound of sand likely carved up by a quad bike. Lucía sat down and leaned back against it.She is on the verge of falling asleep.The last of the rockets drop onto the sand with a dull thud, colourless and broken.Tomás says he can tell a better story than the one in the book. He opens it and pretends to read: ‘Benjamin leaps into the abyss. He plummets into a deep hole of freezing water and is instantly immobilised.’‘Who taught you the word immobilised?’ Lucía asks. And what does Tomás do? He shrugs.Rosa is asleep. Before dropping off, she’d askedwhere her dad was. ‘He had to stay home and work,’ Lucía replied. Rosa stared at her, as if searching her face for some other answer. Then she gave a huge yawn, her gaping mouth wide enough to fit a clenched fist inside.It’s the Fourth of July.The fireworks started at around 8 p.m. when it was still light. ‘I don’t see anything,’ Tomás complained, shading his eyes with his hand as he searched the sky. Once it grew dark, the entire shoreline of Miami Beach was filled with lights exploding into more lights. People sat on the sand clutching bottles of beer and eating food out of tins. Lucía had brought juice boxes along for the children, and champagne for herself. Plus, some organic grapes that Rosa fancied in the super- market and then later didn’t want.They’d cost almost as much as the champagne. Around 8.30 p.m. Rosa spotted some corn on the cob being grilled at the pool bar, went over, ordered three and told them to charge it to the room. She was more than capable of looking after herself in hotels. She had not yet grasped basic multiplication – according to what one Miss Fox had written in her latest school report – but she knew the sixteen digits of her mommy’s credit card off by heart.