Biography
Rexina Vega teaches Spanish at the University of Vigo, where she specializes in literary self-translation and the work of the Galician writer Álvaro Cunqueiro. She is the author of three novels in Galician: Shoal (2007), a look at the troubled years of Franco’s dictatorship through the prism of the industrial, Atlantic city of Vigo, which won the prestigious Xerais Prize for novels; Dark Butterfly (2012), a study of madness, how this leads to division and exclusion, and the impotence of psychiatry to combat it; and No One Sleeps (2017), an examination of the dark side of human relationships, sex and the body as a prison, a sentence. Rexina Vega is known for her poetic style and narrative boldness. She was one of five translators to translate Georges Perec’s novel A Void into Spanish as El secuestro, which received the Stendhal Translation Prize and was shortlisted for the National Translation Award.
Synopsis
Dark Butterfly (176 pages) is Rexina Vega’s second novel. It is the story of a woman suffering from schizophrenia, and the powerlessness of psychiatry to save her.
Sample
“I’m not in right now, please leave a message after the beep.”
“Hello, Hello!… Are you there?… Are you there?… You have to be there! You have to be there! Today!… Come on, hey!… Come on!… Pick up!… Listen to me!……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… You’re not there!… You’re never there!… And I really needed you to be there!… Listen!… the spring has snapped… It’s too late now… I can’t stand it any more… Are you there?… Tell me you’re there!… I don’t want to leave like this… without giving you a kiss good-bye… My head is splitting; I can’t go on. There’s no cure now. Nobody is going to stop this torture.”
Portico of Galician Literature 