Learning to lose
By: David Trueba ; translated by Mara Faye Lethem.
Contributors: Lethem, Mara.
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 579
ISBN-13: 9781590513224; 9781590513880
Subjects: Teenage girls -- Fiction; Traffic accident victims -- Fiction; Soccer players -- Fiction; Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Guilt -- Fiction; Fear of failure -- Fiction; Interpersonal relations -- Fiction; Madrid (Spain) -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction
Work titles: Saber perder.
Description: It is Sylvia's sixteenth birthday, and her life as an adult is about to begin--not with the party she had been planning, but with a car accident and a broken leg. Behind the wheel is a talented young soccer player, just arrived from Buenos Aires and set for stardom on and off the field. As their destinies collide and a young romance is set in motion, across town, Sylvia's father and grandfather are finding their own lives suddenly derailed by a violent murder and a secret affair with a prostitute. Set against the maze of Madrid's congested and contested streets, Learning to Lose follows these four individuals as they swerve off course in unexpected directions. Each of them is dodging guilt and the fear of failure, but their shared search for happiness, love, purity, redemption, and, above all, a way to survive, forms a taut narrative web that binds the characters together. From one of Spain's most celebrated contemporary writers, Learning to Lose is a lucid and gripping view into the complexities of lives overturned and into the capriciousness of modern life, with its intoxicating highs and devastating lows.
Notes: Originally published in Spanish as Saber perder in 2008.