The Rooftop

We begin where we end: what happened in this rundown apartment, closed off from the world?

In a rundown apartment building, in an unnamed city in Uruguay, a father and daughter close themselves off from the world. 'The world is this house', says Clara, and the rooftop becomes their last recess of freedom. A pet canary is their only witness.

As Clara's connection to the outside is stripped away-the neighbor who stops coming by, the lover whose existence is only known by a pregnancy-desperation and paranoia take hold. It's a stifling embrace, and we are there with her, our narrator, dreading what we know the future holds.

Women In Translation: Uruguay, translator: McDermott, Annie, 112pages