The Argentine Novelist Rewriting the Colonial Story for the World
Culture
Key Facts
—The writer. Gabriela Cabezón Cámara is one of the leading figures in contemporary Argentine literature.
—The book. Her novel, published in English as We Are Green and Trembling, was translated by the poet Robin Myers.
—The prizes. It won the United States National Book Award for translated literature.
—The subject. The novel reworks the brutal colonial history of Latin America into something queer, tender and surreal.
—The activist. She co-founded Ni una menos, the feminist movement against gender violence.
—The pattern. An earlier novel, The Adventures of China Iron, was shortlisted for the International Booker in twenty twenty.
Gabriela Cabezon Camara has become one of the clearest signs that Argentine literature is being read, translated and prized far beyond the Spanish-speaking world.
Her fiction takes the founding stories of Latin America and turns them inside out. She writes the colonial past as something strange and alive, full of tenderness and rage, rather than as a settled history.
For a reader in London or Munich, she is a useful door into a national literature that is often admired but, in English, still under-read. Her rise abroad says something about which voices the wider world is now willing to hear.
Why Gabriela Cabezon Camara matters now
Her latest novel appeared in Spanish as Las niñas del naranjel and reached English readers as We Are Green and Trembling, in a translation by the American poet Robin Myers. It has become her most celebrated work internationally.
In the United States it won the National Book Award for translated literature, one of the country’s most prestigious honours. It won the United States National Book Award for translated literature, one of the country’s most prestigious honours.
The judges described a book that is playful and devastating at once, a queer and surreal reworking of a colonial story that still finds glimmers of hope. It draws on the real figure of a seventeenth-century traveller in the depths of the South American jungle.
This is not her first brush with the global stage. Her earlier novel, published in English as The Adventures of China Iron, was shortlisted for the International Booker in twenty twenty, marking her out as a writer to watch.
The writer behind the prizes
Cabezón Cámara was born on 4 November 1968 in San Isidro, in Buenos Aires Province, and built her reputation with earlier books including Slum Virgin and a novella later remade as a graphic novel. Her language is lush and inventive, and her subjects are often the poor and the overlooked.
She is also a public figure beyond her fiction. She co-founded Ni una menos, meaning not one woman less, the mass feminist movement against gender violence that began in Argentina and spread across Latin America.
She is an environmental activist too, and those commitments feed directly into her work. The colonial violence she writes about is bound up with the plunder of land and bodies, themes that resonate well beyond Argentina.
That blend of art and activism is central to her profile at home. It also helps explain why foreign readers respond to her, since the questions she raises about power and history are not confined to one country.
A wider moment for Argentine writing
Her success is part of a broader wave. Argentine and Latin American authors, many of them women, have been winning translation prizes and reaching new readers through small presses and dedicated translators.
The forward question is whether that attention lasts. For now, a novelist who rewrites the colonial past for a global audience is carrying Argentine literature into rooms where it was rarely read before.
Translation is the hidden engine of that shift. Prizes like the International Booker split their reward equally between author and translator, a recognition that a book like hers reaches the world only through the craft of someone rebuilding it in another language.
For the curious reader, the way in is the work itself. Her novels are short, strange and widely available in English now, and starting with the prize-winning one is the quickest route into a body of writing that keeps startling its readers.
Who is Gabriela Cabezon Camara?
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara is a novelist born in San Isidro, Buenos Aires Province, and one of the leading figures in contemporary Argentine literature. She is also an environmental activist and a co-founder of Ni una menos, the feminist movement against gender violence.
What is We Are Green and Trembling about?
It is a queer, surreal reworking of Latin America’s colonial history, drawing on a seventeenth-century figure in the South American jungle. Published in Spanish as Las niñas del naranjel and translated by Robin Myers, it is at once playful, tender and devastating.
What prizes has she won?
We Are Green and Trembling won the United States National Book Award for translated literature. Her earlier novel, The Adventures of China Iron, was shortlisted for the International Booker in twenty twenty.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is 'We Are Green and Trembling' about?
It is a queer, surreal reworking of Latin America's colonial history, drawing on the real figure of a seventeenth-century traveller in the South American jungle. The book is described as playful and devastating at once, finding glimmers of hope within a story of colonial violence.
What major prizes has Gabriela Cabezón Cámara won?
Her novel 'We Are Green and Trembling' won the United States National Book Award for translated literature. Her earlier novel, 'The Adventures of China Iron,' was shortlisted for the International Booker in 2020.
Who translated 'We Are Green and Trembling' into English?
The American poet Robin Myers translated the novel into English. The International Booker Prize splits its reward equally between author and translator, recognising that the book reaches the world through the translator's craft.
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