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A Novel
by Alia Trabucco Zerán
From a global star and International Booker Prize finalist, a razor-sharp, unforgettable novel about a maid who's seen too much and a family at a breaking point.
A young girl has died and the family's maid is being interrogated. She must tell the whole story before arriving at the girl's death.
Estela came from the countryside, leaving her mother behind, to work for the señor and señora when their only child was born. They wanted a housemaid: "smart appearance, full time," their ad said. She wanted to make enough money to support her mother and return home. For seven years, Estela cleaned their laundry, wiped their floors, made their meals, kept their secrets, witnessed their fights and frictions, raised their daughter. She heard the rats scrabbling in the ceiling, saw the looks the señor gave the señora; she knew about the poison in the cabinet, the gun, the daughter's rebellion as she grew up, the mother's coldness, the father's distance. She saw it all.
After a series of shocking betrayals and revelations, Estela stops speaking, breaking her silence only now, to tell the story of how it all fell apart. Is this a story of revenge or a confession? Class warfare or a cautionary tale? Building tension with every page, Clean is a gripping, incisive exploration of power, domesticity, and betrayal from an international star at the height of her powers.
"Clean is the opposite of what readers will feel when they finish this...uncomfortable, fascinating, lovely, and affecting novel...Hughes' splendid translation assures it will resonate in many more places where people live with the alienation and superficiality of late-stage capitalism."—Booklist (starred review)
"[A] propulsive story of class differences...Zerán keeps up the momentum with short chapters and Estela's appealingly snappy voice (she frequently tells her interrogators to 'write this down'). This is bursting with intrigue." —Publishers Weekly
"Trabucco Zerán has crafted an interesting narrative setup, but she can't quite make it work...Her treatment of the theme of class differences is shallow, and the character development just isn't there. A novel that can't get itself off the ground." —Kirkus Reviews
"A rich and compelling read…Uncomfortable and provocative, Clean is a chilling account of one woman's struggle to find meaning in the menial, but also an indictment of a society's overreliance on the unacknowledged exploitation of its domestic workers." —The Financial Times (UK)
"Compelling, claustrophobic and irresistible, Clean is both a masterclass in suspense and a clear-eyed portrait of isolation and grief. Extraordinary." —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water
"Alia Trabucco Zerán is a powerhouse. In Clean, she writes with deadly precision about class, power, privilege and family. The result is terrifying, explosive and exhilarating." —Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies
"Clean is a mesmerizing shapeshifter—condemnation and love, both astonishingly true; griefstruck roar; and a mystery whose bewildering dimensions are impossible to look away from." —Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
This information about Clean was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alia Trabucco Zerán was born in Chile in 1983. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for her MFA in creative writing at New York University, and she holds a PhD in Spanish and Latin American studies from University College London. La Resta (The Remainder), her debut novel, was a finalist for the International Booker Prize and translated into eight languages.
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