Lithium is a novel about the experience of migration, of precariousness, of a hyper-medicated millennial generation searching for a happiness no one can find.

«I’m not pregnant. I got shaken by the sight of my own blood, I didn’t have anyone to turn to. Who could I go to and say I used to be pregnant and I’m not anymore? Would my mother have helped me understand my body? Would my mother have cranked up suddenly like a motor if she found out she might be losing a grandson?»

The voice addressing us here is that of a woman near thirty who is writing almost automatically from a longing to understand all the things that are happening around her: a spontaneous miscarriage, a move, a nasty drug trip, friends who come and go, horoscopes, the mewing of a cat, the enormous, shining eyes of Sailor Moon…

Lithium, the first novel by poet and journalist Malén Denis––which Marina Mariasch describes as a “permanent tension between mind and heart… full of hidden secrets”––is in reality a gathering of instants that takes us straight into the precarious life of Argentina’s youth. A measured, lyrical testimony told from the point of view of a woman who has no other option than to flee, but will not do so until she has whispered her story to us first.