Pilar Adón presents 'Of Beasts and Fowls' (translated by Katie Whittemore)

Third Place Books is thrilled to welcome Pilar Adón to our Ravenna store! Adón will be discussing her latest novel, , the winner of Spain’s Premio Nacional de Narrativa in 2023 and translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore. This event is free and open to the public.

For important updates, registration is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!

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Summer is ending and Coro, an artist frightened of what her paintings of her dead sister may represent, gets in her car one night and starts to drive, with no plan or destination. After a wrong turn down a narrow dirt road, she runs out of gas outside the gates of a large and isolated house called Bethany, a place inhabited exclusively by a small group of women who seem to exist in a closed, hierarchical system a world apart. The women of Bethany live closely with the natural and animal world, celebrate rites and rituals, and, like devotees of an ancestral cult, all dress the same. Most unsettlingly, they seem to know who Coro is already. In fact, they have been expecting her.

How the women came to live in Bethany, why they believe Coro is destined to be there, and most pressing, why won’t they let her leave are questions Coro must face as she struggles between the instinct to escape and the sense that something larger is at work.

When Bethany’s careful balance is disturbed—with violent consequences—by the appearance of a mysterious man who claims the house and land are his, Coro will find herself forced to meet her own ghosts, reckon with her choices, and accept that Bethany might just be where she belongs.

Winner of Spain’s Premio Nacional de Narrativa in 2023, Of Beasts and Fowls introduces a grand talent new to English audiences in a haunting novel rife with natural descriptions, signs and symbols, and a sense of the uncanny.

Pilar Adón was born in Madrid in 1971. She has published the novels Of Beasts and Fowls, which was awarded the Premio Nacional de Narrativa, the Premio de la Crítica, the Francisco Umbral Prize to the Best Book of the Year, and the Cálamo Otra Mirada Prize; The Mayflies, which was considered one of the ten best novels the year, and Las hijas de Sara. She has published three books of short stories (La vida sumergida, El mes más cruel, and Viajes inocenteas, which was awarded the RNE Ojo Crítico Prize), the illustrated long story 'Eterno amor,' and the books of poems Da dolor, Las órdenes (awarded the Book of the Year Prize by the Association of Bookshops of Madrid), Mente animal, and La hija del Cazador. Pilar Adón is also the publisher of Impedimenta Books and translator of works of fiction and essays by authors such as John Fowles, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Penelope Fitzgerald.

About Third Place Books

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

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