Optic Nerve

For fans of Deborah Levy, Olivia Laing and Rachel Cusk, a bold, new, genre-breaking voice on art and female experience

I was reminded of Berger's Ways of Seeing, enfolded in tender and exuberant personal narratives - it's so sophisticated and fascinating, yet has a Calvinoesque light touch; all the textures and nuances come through without labour. Rigorous and mercurial.

The prose, in Thomas Bunstead’s translation, is restrained, funny, by turns (and at once) luminous and melancholy… We are left with a profound inquiry into the place and function of art… as remembrance, as joy and consolation, as meaning, as refuge

A highly original, piercingly beautiful work, a book you’ll want to savour… Gainza is a writer who feels immediately important

Quietly revelatory, and often fascinatingly so

When reading The Optic Nerve, works of art are like songs: they carry the excitement and mystery you feel when you stumble upon them. This is the stunning, lucid debut of a writer who finds gold in the most forgotten folds of experience.

The organizing principle of Optic Nerve is arresting and non-linear: the love affair between its protagonist and visual art… This is a book to read with a search engine at the ready. When the images [of art] are viewable, however pixelated and distorted by a screen, the deftness of Gainza’s visual descriptions brings them to life

Dynamic sense of perception is what Gainza captures in her elegant prose and acute psychological insights

A piercingly beautiful debut novel… clever, surprising and deeply seductive

Completely original, gorgeous ... this woman-guide, who goes from Lampedusa to The Doors with crushing elegance, is unforgettable'

Maria Gainza was born in Buenos Aires, where she still resides. She has worked as a correspondent for the New York Times in Argentina, as well as for ARTnews, and has contributed to Artforum, The Buenos Aires Review, and Radar, the cultural supplement from Pa´gina/12. Her debut novel, Optic Nerve, translated by Thomas Bunstead, was shortlisted for the 2020 LA Times Art Seidenbaum award for First Fiction, a finalist in the 2020 National Translation awards, and a New York Times 'Notable Book' of 2019.

‘A highly original, piercingly beautiful work, full of beautiful shocks… I felt like a door had been kicked open in my brain’ Johanna Thomas-Corr, Observer 
 
A woman searches Buenos Aires for the paintings that are her inspiration and her refuge. Her life -- she is a young mother with a complicated family -- is sometimes overwhelming. But among the canvases, often little-known works in quiet rooms, she finds clarity and a sense of who she is . . . 
 
 'I was reminded of John Berger's Ways of Seeing, enfolded in tender and exuberant personal narratives' 
Claire-Louise Bennett 
 
'This woman-guide, who goes from Lampedusa to The Doors with crushing elegance, is unforgettable' Mariana Enriquez 
 
'A dazzling combination of memoir, fiction and art book, like nothing you’ve ever read before’ Elle

Maria Gainza

Thomas Bunstead

'Vividly detailed and saturated with intricate feeling, Gainza's novel is an engrossing exploration of authenticity, obsession, and the enveloping allure of art'

Alexandra Kleeman, author of SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

This is a truly exquisite novel... It is moving, clever and written wry precision... As much as the narrator is haunted, the reader will be haunted

Gainza weaves a fascinating, often confounding story about beauty, obsession and authenticity... Gainza is sharp, modern and playful, a writer who multiples the possibilities of fiction

A richly detailed detective novel of sorts that explores authenticity and the distance between the way things appear and they way they really are

Dazzling... [a] clever novel that explores the gap between what's remembered and what's real

[A] dazzling novel about art and authenticity... the novel packs a huge amount into its 208 pages. If the reader is never quite sure what's fact and what's fiction, that's just part of the fun

Wonderful... Gainza is fast becoming one of Argentina's most sophisticated writers thanks to the imaginative twirls her writing takes

Unsettling, super-sophisticated games with the unsaid and unsayable

Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*

At a hotel in Buenos Aires, a woman checks in under a pseudonym. She wears a black fur shawl and has no luggage. She is alone. 
 
Over the coming days and nights, she tells a story, which begins with a secret shared in a local bath house, revealing art forgery and fraud on a dazzling scale. At its heart is an enigmatic genius who for years forged portraits of the city's elite, before disappearing without trace. It is a story of influence and intrigue, in which nothing is as it seems. We're not to expect 'names, numbers or dates', she cautions, but a more subtle kind of reckoning... 
 
Told in a mordant, irresistible voice and full of sharp surprises, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a captivating enquiry into what we mean by 'authenticity', in life as in art. At once poised and capricious, elegant and bold, it is a thrilling exploration of the relationships between what is lived, what is told, what is remembered, and what is real.

Maria Gainza

Praise for Portrait of an Unknown Lady

'Vividly detailed and saturated with intricate feeling, Gainza's novel is an engrossing exploration of authenticity, obsession, and the enveloping allure of art'

This is a truly exquisite novel... It is moving, clever and written wry precision... As much as the narrator is haunted, the reader will be haunted

Gainza weaves a fascinating, often confounding story about beauty, obsession and authenticity... Gainza is sharp, modern and playful, a writer who multiples the possibilities of fi ...

'Vividly detailed and saturated with intricate feeling, Gainza's novel is an engrossing exploration of authenticity, obsession, and the enveloping allure of art'

This is a truly exquisite novel... It is moving, clever and written wry precision... As much as the narrator is haunted, the reader will be haunted

Gainza weaves a fascinating, often confounding story about beauty, obsession and authenticity... Gainza is sharp, modern and playful, a writer who multiples the possibilities of fi ...

'Vividly detailed and saturated with intricate feeling, Gainza's novel is an engrossing exploration of authenticity, obsession, and the enveloping allure of art'

This is a truly exquisite novel... It is moving, clever and written wry precision... As much as the narrator is haunted, the reader will be haunted

Gainza weaves a fascinating, often confounding story about beauty, obsession and authenticity... Gainza is sharp, modern and playful, a writer who multiples the possibilities of fi ...

Books by Maria Gainza

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