Patricia de Souza was born in Cora Cora, in the Ayacucho region in southern Peru, in 1964 and grew up in Chaclacayo, a suburb of Lima. Early on she discovered the suggestive power of language and began writing at a young age. She studied Journalism, Philosophy and Literature in Lima and spent a long time in California, where she wrote her first novel, »Cuando llegue la noche« (1994; t: When night arrives). She later moved to France and deepened her studies in Literary Theory and Philosophy in Toulouse and Paris. She currently works as a freelance writer and journalist and regularly publishes articles in »El Comercio«, a large Peruvian daily newspaper and in the Spanish »La razón«. For her own Weblog »Palincestos« she often writes on cultural topics such as art shows, films and literature, as well as on politics and personal experiences, in particular giving accounts of her frequent travels. In addition, she has translated poems by Michel Leiris and prose by Jean Echenoz.
De Souza numbers among the most noteworthy young voices in Peruvian literature. Angst, solitude and a feeling of discontent are, alongside violence itself, common motifs in her work. In her second novel, »La Mentira de un fauno« (1998; t: The lie of a faun), an inheritance leads the young protagonist to the inhospitable landscape of Pucallpa, where the dark mystery of her identity is solved. In the succeeding »El último cuerpo de Úrsula« (2000; Ursula's last body), a gloomy atmosphere of violence and despondency is evoked through a confessional, cataract-like monologue. The experience of physical paralysis resulting from an accident throws the protagonist into a haze of hatred and bitterness, in which she takes revenge on lost pleasures by even turning on her own body. This narrative of revolt born from powerlessness, which also takes the cultural construction of the female body as a theme, was translated into German in 2005.
In her most recently published work, »Electra en la ciudad« (2006; t: Electra in the city), de Souza resumes her descriptions of typical forms of modern dissatisfaction. A group of friends attempt to find fulfilment within their respective spheres of art, politics, the esoteric realm and finance, and in doing so these young adults are made increasingly aware of their own shortcomings through focusing on themselves and their own happiness.
In 2004 de Souza's short story »Desierto« (t: Desert) was translated into French and appeared in the literary journal »Nouvelle revue française«. The author lives between Paris and Tarbes, situated in the foothills of the French Pyrenees where Lautréamont lived – on whom she wrote her thesis.

© internationales literaturfestival berlin

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Cuando llegue la noche
J. Campodónico
Lima, 1994

La Mentira de un fauno
Ediciones El Santo Oficio
Lima, 1998

Stabat mater
Editorial Debate
Madrid, 2001

Der letzte Körper von Ursula
Lateinamerika Verlag
Solothurn, 2005
[T: Peter Tremp]

Electra en la ciudad
Alfaguara
Madrid, 2006

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