The Outside (El afuera)
The Outside by Margarita García Robayo is an invitation to build a more inhabitable world beyond the walls of our home.
During a house move, the author discovers a notebook full of notes she took during the years when she had her two children. Those notes from the past connect with reflections on present-day motherhood and fear of the outside world. This book delves into the middle-class family that constructs itself as an island—or a prison—to protect itself from the rest of the world; it analyzes how a group of selfish and fearful individuals, driven by the instinct to preserve their loved ones, solidifies and inhabits their small private worlds, turning their backs on the outside.
"Margarita García Robayo has elegance, she has narrative perfidy. She has a world inside her head, and it is a complex world, full of edges, of contrasts"
— Leila Guerriero
"Margarita García Robayo's voice is a scalpel entering with fine and precise cuts into the flesh of our personal history"
— Gabriela Wiener
"I believe she is the writer who writes best about intimacy"
— Mariana Enriquez
Published by Anagrama in Spain (20th March 2024), Colombia (end of April), Argentina, etc. (second half of May).