The writer and editor from Madrid aspires to the National Book Award for 'Carcoma', where she fearlessly digs into the wounds of the Civil War.
Saint Gema listens to the poor. The Italian mystic worked as a housekeeper in the house of a bourgeois family from a very young age and, after her death, she helps devotees with their migraines or back pains. The patron saint of servants has a shrine in Madrid where her relics are venerated. As a child, writer and editor Layla Martínez (Madrid, 37 years old) frequented it with her grandmother, who also worked as a maid.
This is the saint who watches over the souls of the dispossessed in “Carcoma (Amor de madre, 2021),” a horror novel that fearlessly digs into the wounds of the Civil War. Published under an independent label, the work has sold more than 20,000 copies in three years and has been translated into some twenty languages. Now, Martinez opts for the recent English edition for the National Book Award, the highest award in American literature, which has never been won by a Spaniard.
