The new novel by the author of the phenomenon Los Escorpiones, Best Novel in Spanish of 2024 (El Mundo) and Best Fiction Book of the Year according to the Madrid Booksellers Association
Alicia leaves her hometown to study Philosophy in Madrid, convinced that there she will find companions to talk about books with and professors capable of changing her life. Seduced by a group of students as intelligent as they are cruel, she will soon discover that knowledge is not always synonymous with virtue, as arrogance reigns in the classrooms, and intellectual brilliance coexists with precariousness, cynicism, and everyday miseries. In the midst of her particular Bildungsroman, between student movements and the study of what love means for authors like Plato or Sartre, she will become obsessed with Juan, one of her professors, even though he is more than ten years older.
La chica más lista que conozco is a novel about shame, the complexities of consent in relationships marked by inequality, and the limits of Me Too. Written as a philosophical treatise, it also explores female friendship in masculinized environments, the beauty of knowledge, the anxiety of forging an identity, and the nuances of political commitment in intimate life.
After the literary phenomenon of Los Escorpiones, which earned her the applause of readers and critics, and comparisons with such brilliant and diverse authors as Marías, Cervantes, Enriquez, Foster Wallace, Bolaño, or Houellebecq, Sara Barquinero, "the writer who has turned the literary market upside down [con] a reading experience that obsesses, unsettles, and drags you to the end" (Esquire), establishes herself as the great narrator of her generation.
