Perfect Happiness

by Anjel Lertxundi; translated by Amaia Gabantxo.

Perfect Happiness can be described as a realist novella with lyrical overtones. It explores how witnessing a terrorist assassination affects a teenage girl’s life over a span of fourteen years. Against this backdrop Lertxundi explores one of his recurring themes: the relationship between art and death. Perfect Happiness is moral without being didactic, and confessional – as well as natural and fluid – in tone. Confronting its horrific theme with profound existential understanding, it is an eloquent plea for the right to beauty and happiness and the importance of following one’s conscience.

148 pp., paper (ISBN 978-1-877802-74-4), $19.95.