‘An intimate story from the family archive, a story that is also the infamous history of our continent’ Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive
‘Powerful and searing’ Samanta Schweblin, author of Fever Dream
A provocative autobiographical novel that reckons with the legacy of colonialism through one woman’s family ties to both colonised and coloniser
In an ethnographic museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener is confronted with her unusual inheritance. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artefacts, the spoils of European colonial plunder. As she peers through the glass, she sees sculptures of Indigenous faces that resemble her own – but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener.
In the wake of her father’s death, Gabriela begins delving into all she has inherited from her paternal line. From the brutal trail of racism and theft that Charles left behind to revelations of her father’s infidelity, she traces a legacy of abandonment, jealousy and colonial violence, in turn reframing her own struggles with desire, love and race. Seeking relief from these personal and historical wounds, Gabriela turns to the body and desire as sources of both constraint and potential freedom.
Blending personal, historical and fictional writing, Undiscovered tells of a search for identity beyond the old stories of patriarchs and plunder. Subversive, intimate and fiercely irreverent, it builds to a powerful call for decolonization.
Reviews
An intimate story from the family archive that is also the infamous history of our continent
[Undiscovered] captivated me… Powerful and searing, this novel snaps, bucks, heals, and snaps again
Powerful, genre-transcending… A quiet, lucid triumph
Irish Times
Perhaps the most irreverent and daring voice of the new literary generation of Latin American women
New York Times
A blistering yet surprisingly tender engagement with some of the most highly debated issues of our moment: cultural appropriation, xenophobia and internalized racism, migration, decolonization, family legacies and sexual mores… [A] lyrical, empathetic, entertaining and sometimes hair-raising reading experience
TLS
Undiscovered‘s beautiful blend of fiction and personal feeling on everything from sex, to death, to Peru’s traumatic history to France’s heritage-colonial industry could not be more contemporary, vital and important, or expressed in more dynamic and immersive prose
The best book that I’ve read about ancestry and love in the contemporary postcolonial condition
Gabriela Wiener’s ease and grace allow her in Undiscovered to talk about family, desire, racism, colonialism and being a migrant both tenderly and sharply, vulnerable but strong like her beautiful writing
Sharp and insightful about self-discovery, postcolonialism, sexual desires, and polyamory in the 21st century… Wiener’s book ultimately triumphs due to her forceful writing, lucid ideas, and an irrepressible quest for a decolonised present
Morning Star
A major voice in Peruvian literature… Undiscovered has an appealingly raw, confessional tone, but its prose is highly polished
NPR
[An] open-ended meditation, which wrestles questions of heritage and colonialism
Daily Mail
A rollicking decolonial fact-fiction remix of her family’s histories, the life of her great-great-great grandfather, the explorer Charles Wiener, and how all this time plays out in her own body, and her current life, and polyamorous household in Madrid
Electric Literature
Following the trail of Gabriela Wiener, walking behind her, dreaming of catching up with her, is one of the few luxuries we have left
Incisive… Wiener shifts seamlessly from the intimate to the historical, often with humor
Publishers Weekly
A collective autobiography in a decolonial key; a settling of scores that is unafraid of self-criticism; a language that jolts and startles
Gabriela Wiener is pure rebellion, humour and tenderness at the same time
