AUTHOR: Teresa Ruíz Rosas
PUBLISHER: Ediciones Turpial
GENRE: Literature/Fiction
READER’S NAME: Alisa Newman
DATE: May 31, 2021

I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to read and recommend this novel.  It is a masterfully written story as well as an insightful and compassionate look at an important global issue: sexual slavery.

Nada que declarer is a story within a story, describing the life-changing encounter between two women who are both from Peru and living in Germany, but in very different circumstances: Silvia, a literary translator from a middle-class family of intellectuals, and Diana, a young woman from a poor neighborhood of Lima tricked into a life of sexual servitude.  They meet at the Düsseldorf train station as Diana is attempting to flee her captors.  After helping Diana escape and find her way back to Peru, Silvia remains her friend and promises to write her story.  From what I have been able to learn about the author’s background, the character of Silvia is an alter ego, leading one to wonder how much of the rest of the story might be true as well.

The narrative is framed in such a way that phrases, snatches of songs and objects take on new significance as the story unfolds.  The title itself, Nada que declarer (Nothing to Declare), refers to Diana’s arrival in Europe under the spell of her would-be pimp, who blithely marches her through customs as though she were just another piece of baggage not worth mentioning.  Both the main characters are well-developed, with convincing arcs, and the story itself is enjoyable and compelling.  Although the author has a clear purpose in writing this novel – to raise awareness of the scope and severity of a devastating social problem – the reader does not feel like he or she is being hit over the head with a moral lesson.  The highest praise I can give is that I enjoyed this book so much that I plan to look for other titles by the same author.

As should be clear from this review, I wholeheartedly recommend this book for translation so that it can reach a wider audience.  It will require a skilled literary translator to do it justice – one of the caliber of Silvia and Teresa Ruiz Rosas themselves: The author enjoys playing with language, and conveying the same spirit and richness in another language will be a challenge.  However, it is one well worth taking on, and I look forward to seeing an English-language edition of this book on shelves around the world!.