Carmen Laforet’s first novel, Nada, written when she was just 23, won the Nadal Prize, establishing Laforet as one of the greatest writers of post-war Spanish literature. She went on to win the Menorca Prize in 1955 and the National Literature Prize in 1956 for the novel The New Woman. Although she gradually distanced herself from the literary world in the 1970s, she was rediscovered internationally at the beginning of this century and has been translated into more than 30 languages. 2021 marked the centenary of her birth. The only novel of Laforet’s not to be translated into English is La Mujer Nueva (The New Woman). This edition offers a translation by Claire Wadie and an introduction by the Laforet scholar, Caragh Wells.
Ahead of its time, The New Woman tells the story of a woman who longs for freedom in a world in which she has been denied it. But she learns that true freedom also means responsibility. Paulina is young and passionate but vain. After leaving her husband in order to live with her married lover, Paulina experiences a profound religious conversion. She had always been critical of Catholicism but she begins to see a spiritual dimension to her own life and yearns for change. She must decide how to live authentically: stay with her lover, live alone, join a convent, or return to her husband? In making this decision, she comes to understand the full meaning of her humanity, her womanhood, and her place in society. The New Woman offers insight into a woman’s experience of the Spanish civil war and Catholicism’s abiding spiritual richness even at a time when the political situation in Spain rendered the Church unpopular in the eyes of many young women.
