Stubborn Archivist

When your mother considers another country home, it's hard to know where you belong. When the people you live among can't pronounce your name, it's hard to know exactly who you are. And when your body no longer feels like your own, it's hard to understand your place in the world.

This is a lyrical novel of growing up between cultures, of finding your space within them and of learning to live in a traumatized body. Our stubborn archivist tells her story through history, through family conversations, through the eyes of her mother, her grandmother and her aunt and slowly she begins to emerge into the world, defining her own sense of identity.

An exciting, bold, witty debut, STUBBORN ARCHIVIST is unlike any book you've read, and one you won't forget.

Short-listed for Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2019 (UK)
Long-listed for Desmond Elliott Prize 2019 (UK)
Long-listed for Dylan Thomas Prize 2020 (UK)
Nominated for Rathbones Folio Prize 2020 (UK)

“I read Stubborn Archivist in a ravenous gulp. It's stunning : so articulate about what it means to live between two languages and countries, tenderly unravelling the knots of unbelonging . Stubborn Archivist is an intimate and wonderfully resourceful exploration of origins. In its quest to uncover what a person is made of it digs deeply into the living body , as well as tracing back through its tangled roots. Visceral and elegant, circumspect and vivid, Yara Rodrigues Fowler has a distinctly unhampered way of telling a story ; I liked Stubborn Archivist very very much.My goodness. Yara Rodrigues-Fowler has conjured a work of rare power, startlingly original form, and devastating beauty. This novel is a triumph”

I read Stubborn Archivist in a ravenous gulp. It's stunning: so articulate about what it means to live between two languages and countries, tenderly unravelling the knots of unbelonging.

Stubborn Archivist is an intimate and wonderfully resourceful exploration of origins. In its quest to uncover what a person is made of it digs deeply into the living body, as well as tracing back through its tangled roots. Visceral and elegant, circumspect and vivid, Yara Rodrigues Fowler has a distinctly unhampered way of telling a story; I liked Stubborn Archivist very very much.

My goodness. Yara Rodrigues-Fowler has conjured a work of rare power, startlingly original form, and devastating beauty. This novel is a triumph

Yara Rodrigues Fowler is a novelist from South London. She is also a trustee of Latin American Women's Aid, an organisation that runs the only two refuges in Europe for and by Latin American Women.

Stubborn Archivist is Yara's first novel; she is currently writing her second.

When your mother considers another country home, it's hard to know where you belong. When the people you live among can't pronounce your name, it's hard to know exactly who you are. And when your body no longer feels like your own, it's hard to understand your place in the world. This is a lyrical novel of growing up between cultures, of finding your space within them and of learning to live in a traumatized body. Our stubborn archivist tells her story through history, through family conversations, through the eyes of her mother, her grandmother and her aunt and slowly she begins to emerge into the world, defining her own sense of identity. An exciting, bold, witty debut, STUBBORN ARCHIVIST is unlike any book you've read, and one you won't forget.

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