Karina Sainz Borgo (Caracas, Venezuela, 1982) is a cultural columnist, also a writer. As a journalist, he worked in the Spanish communication media (Vozpopuli, Zenda or ABC), because he has lived in our country for twenty years, which surprises everyone who enters it on literature, deeply Venezuelan and Caribbean.
Nazarene
Karina Sainz Borgo
Alfaguara, 2026
200 pages. €18.90
Until today, novels were published in the fiction sphere La hija de la española (2019), El Tercer País (2021) Dr. Schubert’s Island (2023). In the first half, Venezuela is urgently abandoned and forced to move to this territory; and in all is the universe inhabited by us women in the gamewhose existence unfolds in a legendary setting. The texts are also full of intertextuality.
En NazareneKarina Sainz Borgo nothing in the same amniotic fluid. The main character, whose name is the title of the book, is the seventh of every woman who lives in it a space with a touch of gray tragedy. Nazarena closes the terrace day and night as an antidote to the misfortunes and misfortunes that surround her lineage.
So they wish for the return of some deceased, the fateful visit of two men, the death of many animals, a gloomy memory of the past, a heap of fates, the ropes between the men and the desire to escape the attack. Also the broken spirit of the mother, who is exhausted, without the strength to go forward.
The amendment begins with the text of El Rey Lear who gets the polluting question (“Tigres, más que hijas. ¿Qué habéis hecho?”), to which there are a series of dramatic affirmations: “Soy la septima de ocho hembras, como si sono los puñales de la Virgen”; “Si nacen vivas, seno dolor. Si no nacen, también seno dolor”; “A la vida le custa abrirse paso en esta tierra”; “Women gather from the growing branches.”
The main action takes place in the Middle Ages, in La Araira, although the setting also moves between Italy, Germany, Argentina, Granada and the Caribbean in general; and takes place in an imprecise period between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The present is entered with significant flashbacks, which include a connection to the place of his father – Guiseppe Della Vicenza – an Italian who goes there to work on the construction of the railway and is killed by a horse.
These are the Miércoles de Ceniza in which Nazarena discovered an obsessive form to spread evil, a black Cadillac parked in front of the family home. Two pleasant-looking men look inside and go to live.
‘Nazarena’ is a powerful novel about life, pain and death
The plot consists of numerous stories, among which the protagonists are the women of Vicenza: Bendita lives trapped in an unhappy marriage; I am glad to return, for her husband has left her; Leda was speechless when she met her lover; Nazarena, the narrator, has an impaired mental capacity…
During this period they were born Mendito, a gypsy who accompanied Lorca to Buenos Aires and who acted as Brigida’s lover; or Klaus Krugman, the crystal-clear optometrist known to the author’s regulars. When mixed, some release explosive shards due to the difference in tone, though eventually everything stops.
En Nazarene echoes of numerous works and authors are heard. Adams de El Rey Learresolved Macbeth, The sound and the fury de Faulkner, Pedro Paramo de Rulfo, Life is sweet de Calderón, as well as Sophocles, Lorca, García Márquez and Jorge Amado. A powerful novel about life, pain and death. At the bottom, as always, Venezuela.
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