UNDISCOVERED by Gabriela Wiener

Translated by Julia Sanches

The brutal arrogance of colonialism, and the desperate quest to break free from its shackles, loom large in Gabriel Wiener’s Undiscovered. In the wake of her father’s death, Wiener visits an ethnographic museum in Paris, where she pays particular attention to an exhibition on pre-Colombian artefacts. She is drawn in not so much by what she sees behind the glass but by the person who stole it all: her great-great grandfather, the Austrian explorer Charles Wiener. While plundering Peru, he also impregnated her great-great grandmother before disappearing back to Europe. This disturbing provenance lays the foundations for a searing work of interrogative autofiction.

Unflinching in her resolve, Wiener tears down the entire façade of her identity, from her own sense of cultural belonging, to her father’s infidelities, to the fragile throuple arrangement with her Peruvian husband and white girlfriend, to the legacy of destruction wrought by old Chuck and his ilk. It makes for compelling reading, an indictment both savage and sensual, that pulses with a fierce energy of genuine curiosity. Little wonder it has found its way to the long list for this year’s International Booker Prize.

Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener (Tr. Julia Sanches)
Pushkin Press, 2023
183 pages