Woodworm
About this ebook
'Lays bare intergenerational horror, feminine rage and the taking back of power' STYLIST
'Incredible' FINANCIAL TIMES
The house breathes.
The house contains bodies and secrets.
The house is visited by ghosts, by angels that line the roof like insects, and by saints that burn the bedsheets with their haloes.
Nobody ever leaves.
The house was built by a small-time hustler as a means of controlling his wife, and even after so many years, their daughter and her granddaughter can’t leave.
They may be witches or they may just be angry, but when the mysterious disappearance of a young boy from a local wealthy family draws unwanted press attention, the two isolated women, already subjects of public scorn, combine forces with the spirits that haunt them in pursuit of something that resembles justice.
Layla Martínez’s eerie debut novel Woodworm is class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun.
Translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott
**Readers love Woodworm**
‘It draws you in and slams the door behind you’
‘A monstrous debut’
‘I want to read this book again and again’
‘Biting and inventive’
‘Shirley Jackson by way of Lina Wolff’
‘Deeply, and wonderfully, unsettling’
‘Evokes horrific imagery with a poetic, gnashing tongue’
‘Extraordinary!’
Ratings and reviews
About the author
Layla Martinez (Author)
Layla Martínez is a writer and translator from Madrid. She writes about music for El Salto, and about television for La Última Hora. Since 2014 she has co-directed the independent publisher Antipersona. Woodworm is her first novel.
Sophie Hughes (Translator)
Sophie Hughes is the translator of over twenty novels by authors such as Fernanda Melchor, Alia Trabucco Zerán and Enrique Vila-Matas. She has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award, and longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. In 2021, she was awarded the Queen Sofía Translation Prize.
Annie McDermott (Translator)
Annie McDermott’s translations from Spanish and Portuguese include works by Mario Levrero, Selva Almada, Ariana Harwicz and Lídia Jorge. In 2022, she was awarded the Premio Valle-Inclán for her translation of Wars of the Interior by Joseph Zárate.
