Free Radicals - Rosa Beltrán

"It's very strange to see your mother's hands caress her lover's face. To see her comb his beard. It's also strange that the eyes that once watched everything have given up on the world as if saying: you can go on without me."

One ordinary day, in the late seventies, the protagonist opened her front door and saw her mother leave on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with her neighbor: an extravagant painter and zodiac card reader. Many years later, she tells her daughter the circumstances that led to that departure, and also those that preceded it, in a story that brings together three generations of women and almost six decades of historical events (from the student movements of '68 to the current pandemic, passing through dictatorships and the fall of the Berlin Wall, globalization and screens): a subversive and feminist look at the country and the world during that period. An extraordinary, surprising, and moving life, yet devoid of sentimentality. With narrative intelligence, a sense of humor, and a nostalgic vision of a world gone by, Rosa Beltrán gives us an intimate and dazzling story that will resonate with several generations of readers who have, in one way or another, experienced what is recounted.

Critics have said:

"Written with delicious irony and a style completely its own, Radicales libres grabs us by the neck and doesn't let go. It is a historical and intimate novel at the same time that takes us through all states of mind." Guadalupe Nettel

"Radicales libres is both a powerful and subtle portrait of the dialogue between three generations of women, a thrilling detective novel (where the great mystery is family), an evocative piece of reconciliation, and a vibrant account of our past and present rebellions. Rosa Beltrán has written a memorable work." Jorge Volpi

"This wonderful novel is a necessary and open dialogue with the invisible history of the last sixty years. It masterfully recreates an era in which women powerfully forged their own perspective and were also protagonists of the contradictions of the Mexican essence." Ana Merino

"Rosa Beltrán's characters intuit from the core of their being that everything—telling a family story, enduring a political history, surviving the journey or closeness or abandonment—is more real when it becomes fiction. Without fiction there is no love: narrating ourselves forces us to reinvent ourselves. It is this wisdom that makes the voices in this novel unforgettably beautiful and human." Julián Herbert