FRACTURE

Writing as an unbridgeable distance when everything falls apart.

Josefina Licitra publishes an article about her father—a man who barely speaks to her and has lived in Europe since 1978, when he left Argentina as a political exile. In the piece, she tries to reconstruct their shared past and understand why he stopped talking to her, exploring “how distance breeds an abrasive silence, capable of eroding bonds that are culturally built to withstand almost anything.”

The article is the molotov cocktail that finally shatters what little remained of their connection. From that moment on, he cuts her off—and she, stunned, finds herself unable to write. That is, until she learns of his upcoming trip to Buenos Aires. She begins to keep a journal, waiting for his arrival.

With Crac, Josefina Licitra delivers her most personal and heartrending book to date. She gathers the broken pieces of her family history—fragments that also reflect a country which, in the 1970s, crossed every imaginable boundary—and breathes life into a delicate yet powerful narrative. A novel about writing and the inability to write, about family, and about how to move forward when everything is fractured. A book read with a lump in the throat, carried by the sharp elegance of Licitra’s prose.