The Naked Woman

A woman’s feminist awakening drives a hypocritical village to madness in rural Uruguay in this "wild, brutal paean to freedom" (NPR.org).
Shortlisted for the National Translation Award
"Somers' feminism is profound, and complicated." —NPR.org
"A surreal, nightmarish book about women’s struggle for autonomy—and how that struggle is (always, inevitably) met with violence." —Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
When The Naked Woman was originally published in 1950, critics doubted a woman writer could be responsible for its shocking erotic content. In this searing critique of Enlightenment values, fantastic themes are juxtaposed with brutal depictions of misogyny and violence, and frantically build to a fiery conclusion.
Finally available to an English-speaking audience, Armonía Somers will resonate with readers of Clarice Lispector, Djuna Barnes, and Leonora Carrington.

Born in 1941, Armonía Somers was a Uruguayan feminist, pedagogue, novelist, and short story writer. Though considered to be part of the literary generation of 1945 in Uruguay, her style and use of a pseudonym set her apart. She passed away in May 1994. The Naked Woman is her first novel translated into English.

Kit Maude is a Spanish-to-English translator based in Buenos Aires. His translations of stories by Latin American authors have been featured in Granta, The Literary Review, and The Short Story Project, among other publications. He writes reviews for Ñ, Otra Parte, and the Times Literary Supplement.

Elena Chavez Goycochea is a PhD candidate in Latin-American, Iberian and Latino Cultures at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research interests include Latin-American and Caribbean women’s writing, contemporary Afro-Brazilian literature, and literatures from transitional periods. She teaches at the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at City College of New York.