Jessica Zafra's Blog

TWISTED, the 25th Anniversary Edition, is available now! A selection of the most memorable pieces from the first 3 Twisted books, which you lent to friends who never returned them, or lost to Typhoon Ondoy, and couldn’t replace because they’re out of print. Includes “A Simple Proposal for World Domination”, “The Vulcan Mind and Cheese […]

I had no intention of adopting Buffy, and she showed no interest in becoming an indoor cat. She was not cute and cuddly, and even now her comfortable life has not changed the expression on her face, which is that of a ruthless killer. Sometimes she stares at me as if she were calculating the […]

50% discount if you enroll by 23 July. Love Stories. Happy, unhappy, factual, imaginary, human, non-human, carnal, platonic, requited, hopeless, eternal, fleeting, genesis, apocalypse. Sign up for Jessica Zafra’s Writing Boot Camp, which happens over three Saturdays in August (7, 14, and 21) from 3-6pm on Zoom. For inquiries please email saffron.safin@gmail.com, or send us […]

In this round table, organised on the occasion of the Festival “Benengeli 2021. International Week of Literature in Spanish”, authors José Dalisay, Víctor del Árbol and Hernán Díaz have a conversation about narrative and the presence of the self in their novels, moderated by Jessica Zafra.

Casanova and the Faceless Woman by Olivier Barde-Cabuçon Paris, 1759. The monarchy is disintegrating, the king is a pedophile, the king’s mistress wields her influence, the clergy schemes, many conspiracies are afoot, and a woman is found murdered…and with no face. The witness: the infamous seducer Casanova, who’s fled Venice and insinuated himself into Parisian […]

I put off registering for vaccination because I didn’t want to navigate the bureaucracy and I was waiting for the other vaccines to become available. I did not want to be in a crowd (even in non-pandemic times I am socially distant). Through my friend I signed up with a private provider whose Moderna stocks […]

I know I say “brilliant” a lot, but this book is a light source in our shady times. Initially I was drawn by the premise—woman discovers boyfriend is a popular anonymous conspiracy theorist on Instagram—but I was swiftly, then happily disappointed. It veered from the direction I’d expected and went straight into my life. Our […]

Spring by Ali Smith Suddenly I realized I had not read Spring, which has been sitting on a shelf for two years. How could this happen? My excuse is that I do not regard Ali Smith’s book as narratives but as adventures, so I save them for when I really need them (like now). When […]

Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro Probably because I have been languishing in enforced isolation for 13 months, though it must be said that I am antisocial by nature and therefore comfortable in isolation as long as I have the option to go out (and at the time I wrote this I had not […]