Undiscovered

Name: Undiscovered
Rating: 3.289 (134 reviews)
ISBN: 9780063256729

By Gabriela Wiener & Julia Sanches

Publisher Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

“An intimate story from the family archive that is also the infamous history of our continent.”—Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive

Award-winning Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener delivers her stunning English breakthrough in this "appealingly raw" (NPR) and "incisive" (Publishers Weekly) work of literary autofiction that explores the legacy of colonialism through one woman’s family ties to both the colonized and colonizer.

Alone in a museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener confronts her complicated family heritage. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artifacts, spoils of European colonialism, many stolen from her homeland of Peru. As she peers at countless sculptures of Indigenous faces, each resembling her own, she sees herself in them—but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener.

In the wake of her father’s death, Gabriela returns to Peru. In alternating strands, she begins to probe her father’s infidelity, her own polyamorous relationship, and the history of her colonial ancestor, unpacking the legacy that is her birthright. From the eye-patched persona her father adopted to carry out his double life to the brutal racism she encounters in her ancestor Charles’s book, she traces a cycle of abandonment, jealousy, and fraud, in turn reframing her own personal struggles with desire, love, and race in this unflinching family saga.

Translated by Julia Sanches

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Undiscovered Reviews

3.0

Chelsea Franco

Created 6 days ago

Sudha Raman

Created 28 days ago

“I’m ending this with a strange sense of relief. I almost DNF-ed it but pushed through, and while I’m glad I read it, it didn’t quite land for me. I was genuinely excited going in. Latin culture feels especially visible right now (thank you Bad Bunny) and I was keen to read translated fiction from Peru. I was also drawn to the book’s engagement with anti-colonialism, a subject I care deeply about. On paper, this should have worked for me. What threw me off was the form. It sits somewhere between novel, memoir and extended essay and that in-between quality shapes the whole reading experience. The narrative moves across an ancestor’s expedition, her father’s history and her own life in a way that feels deliberately fragmented. I can see how that fractured structure echoes the legacies of colonialism, inheritance and cultural identity that the book is trying to unpack. But for me, the movement between timelines felt more disjointed than illuminating. Because it leans so heavily into autofiction, the focus stays tightly on the author’s life and personality. I understand that the personal is the point. Still, I found myself wanting more sustained historical or political excavation (lol) beyond the self. At times, the narrator’s presence felt less like a lens and more like a performance, which pulled me out of the bigger questions the book gestures towards. I also struggled with the extensive detailing of her sex life, particularly the Decolonizing Desire group. I grasp the intellectual link between body and history, between intimacy and inherited power structures. But the execution often felt excessive and at times distracting from the themes I was most interested in. There is real ambition here and flashes of sharp insight about inheritance, trauma, race and belonging. I can see why this would resonate strongly with readers who enjoy autofiction that foregrounds the personal as political. For me though, there were simply too many threads competing at once and the overall effect felt scattered rather than cohesive.”

Morally ambiguous Unlikable Confusing Disjointed Historical Clear but uninspired Clunky Hard to follow Abuse Racism

Issie Luna

Created about 1 month ago

“I had high hopes for this book considering the premise, but as I neared the end I sort of realized we haven’t really gone anywhere. While I appreciate the thoughtful musings on colonialism in latino family trees and in relationships, there was a lot of other musings too… like mostly that. They’re good musings, for sure, but I wanted more. Lots of lovely words on archeology and colonialism in Peru. A LOT of talk about polyamory on the part of the MC and connecting that to her father’s infidelity. Lots of searching in her family tree and in herself.”

Diverse representation Disjointed Slow-paced

Seba Spinner

Created about 2 months ago

Laura Castle

Created 2 months ago

“Undiscovered is an amazing memoir written by Peruvian journalist, Gabriela Wiener. It covers a period of time after her father’s death, but isn’t solely about him or her grief. She explores what it means to potentially have a grave robbing European ancestor, living in Spain as an immigrant, the pain of love and sex. She imagines scenarios that are so life like it’s hard to tell if they are fictionalized or not. It’s also such a beautifully written book and unflinchingly open to the point where one feels like a voyeur. I would highly recommend this to anyone who likes beautiful prose or memoirs in general”

Clever plotting Beautifully-written Easy to read Funny Original Death Grief Racism

About Gabriela Wiener

Gabriela Wiener is a Peruvian writer and journalist. Her books include Sexographies, a collection of gonzo journalism about contemporary sex culture. Her work has been widely published in anthologies and translated into six languages. In 2018, she was awarded Peru’s National Journalism Award for her part in an investigative report on gender violence. She currently resides in Madrid.

Other books by Gabriela Wiener

Nine Moons

Gabriela Wiener & Jessica Powell

$14.99

Sexographies

Gabriela Wiener & Jennifer Adcock &

$14.99

Julia Sanches

Julia Sanches is a literary translator working from Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. Recent translations include Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2024, Boulder by Eva Baltasar, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023, and Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver, for which she won the 2022 PEN translation prize. Born in Brazil, she currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.