El alfabeto de los pájaros

Brasil: Cosac Naify

“Unlike anything else. A moving novel with an utterly original plot.” Marcos Giralt Torrente

“A novel that is not only well narrated, but very intelligent." J.M. Pozuelo Yvancos, ABC

«An amazing multicultural fable.» M. Rivière, El País

«For the first time, a novel that deals with adoption. A beautiful mixture of poetry, stories and a novel, written with exquisite sensitivity. The best kind of fiction.» R. Ruiz Garzón, Qué Leer

«Rarely is the power and generosity of love told with such tenderness, as it is in this novel about the power of words and the imagination.» Guillermo Busutil, Mercurio

“Nuria Barrios never relinquishes the issues that have always been at the heart of her work: the female body and its transformations, and the basic functions of nature that shape human life. But in this book she adopts a more personal, original style – naive, innocent and yet subtle language, highly appropriate to the occasion, in which words, like birds, fly. The most surprising events acquire the simplicity of everyday life and one is made to think that miracles are possible.” Lluís Satorras, El País

A novel about what it means to be an adopted child, about forgetting and remembering, about the ferocious wounds provoked by abandonment and about the moving strength of love. But above all, it’s a novel about the power of the imagination.

Nix is six years old, she was born in China and she’s adopted. She loves her family very much, but the pain of being abandoned torments her. Only the stories her mother invents makes her feel better. But the pain always returns. The little girl believes that the secret of happiness lies in the belly in which we live before we’re born and that, in order to be happy, she must return to the womb of her Chinese mother, the place where it all began. Only by going back to the beginning will she be able to learn who she is, to make sense of her new life and finally be able to eliminate the angst of so many unanswered questions. But the journey isn’t possible. Or is it?

**The novel has been selected as a recommended title by the National Brazilian Foundation for Children and Young Adult's Books (FNLIJ) and is among the shortlisted titles to the best young adult novel in translation published in Brazil in 2014.**