Biography
Sara Vila Alonso studied journalism at the University of Santiago de Compostela and worked as a journalist at the Diario de Pontevedra. Her first two novels have been incredibly successful. Eight Days without Eva Cortes (2021), which is available in English, follows the journalist Antía Ubeira’s investigation into the case of a missing woman. It received the Illa Nova Award for writers under the age of 35. The Fire (2024) is about a fire that overwhelms a village in Galicia and all the events leading up to it, seen from the point of view of a teenager. It received the prestigious Blanco Amor Award for long novels in the Galician language. Sara Vila Alonso works for the publishing house Edicións Xerais de Galicia.
Synopsis
The Fire (200 pages) is Sara Vila Alonso’s second novel in the Galician language and received the Blanco Amor Award. It was first published by Edicións Xerais de Galicia in 2024. The novel is divided into two parts (thirty-seven chapters) detailing the events leading up to the fire, and a shorter section detailing the fire itself. In the first part, the narrator finds it difficult to go back to her grandmother’s village, Neboeiro. It is “an ugly, dead place”.
Sample
Neboeiro is a place like any other, only empty. A lane that was once flanked by eucalyptus trees leads to my grandmother’s house at the end, just before you reach the river.
There are several houses there, all on the right-hand side of the lane, and not one is lived in. In front of them, there’s a huge meadow named O Campiño where dead leaves would pile up and up. Brambles used to smother the vine posts as well as the remnants of the crab apple tree that, towards the end of summer, would produce small fruits carrying enough scent to permeate the whole village. Nothing at all remained of my grandmother’s orchard. Even before the flames, the grape vines would grow enmeshed with berry branches from the blackberry bushes which spread wildly across O Campiño. It’s not a pretty place, that should be obvious from what I’m saying. It wasn’t pretty before the fire either, nor back when my grandmother would look after the plants, the animals and me too.
Portico of Galician Literature 