IRA MATH­UR

“A book is its own crea­ture, and it will tell you when it’s done grow­ing.” —Dame Ma­ri­na Warn­er to Brazil­ian writer Mar­cel­la Marx.

This Sun­day, as part of our Book­shelf se­ries on no­table Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can women writ­ers, we spot­light Mar­cel­la Marx, a Brazil­ian-born writer whose work ex­plores the in­ter­sec­tions of war, dis­place­ment, and per­son­al in­her­i­tance.

Born in Brazil, Marx has spent her ca­reer ex­am­in­ing how mem­o­ry and his­to­ry shape iden­ti­ty, trac­ing the un­spo­ken trau­mas of past gen­er­a­tions. With an MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing from Birk­beck, she wrote un­der the men­tor­ship of Dame Ma­ri­na Warn­er, among the most dis­tin­guished lit­er­ary and cul­tur­al his­to­ri­ans of our time.

Marx is cur­rent­ly a mem­ber of the Lon­don Li­brary Emerg­ing Writ­ers Pro­gramme (2024/2025), se­lect­ed from over 1,700 ap­pli­cants.

Her de­but nov­el, The Past is An­oth­er Coun­try, moves be­tween Brazil and Ger­many across three sec­tions—Child­hood, War, and Adult­hood—un­rav­el­ling the in­ter­twined jour­neys of her grand­par­ents, who crossed the At­lantic in op­po­site di­rec­tions dur­ing World War II.

Vas­co, a Brazil­ian sol­dier fight­ing in Italy, and Georg, a Jew­ish refugee flee­ing Nazi Ger­many, em­body two mi­gra­tions shaped by con­flict. Along­side them, Rosa, an aban­doned daugh­ter seek­ing so­lace in Catholi­cism, and Iso­le­ta, a self-taught artist de­fy­ing con­ven­tion, cre­ate a mo­sa­ic of in­her­i­tance and sur­vival.

The nov­el, longlist­ed for the Berlin Writ­ing Prize (2022) and a fi­nal­ist for the Rest­less Books Prize for New Im­mi­grant Writ­ing (2024), ex­am­ines the ten­sion be­tween re­mem­ber­ing and for­get­ting, si­lence and tes­ti­mo­ny, be­long­ing and ex­ile.

Marx’s con­nec­tion to Dame Warn­er places her with­in a lin­eage of writ­ers who grap­ple with his­to­ry’s echoes. Dame Ma­ri­na Warn­er, a his­to­ri­an, nov­el­ist, and crit­ic, is renowned for her work on myth, sto­ry­telling, and the cul­tur­al residues of em­pire.

A for­mer pres­i­dent of the Roy­al So­ci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture, she has shaped con­tem­po­rary thought on how nar­ra­tive weaves the past and present to­geth­er. Dame Warn­er’s own ties to the Caribbean—her fa­ther man­aged the leg­endary Globe cin­e­ma in Port-of-Spain, a land­mark that shaped the is­land’s re­la­tion­ship with film and sto­ry­telling (Warn­er, Fa­ther’s Day, 2022)—add an­oth­er lay­er to the res­o­nance be­tween Marx’s work and the his­to­ries she seeks to un­earth.

Marx re­calls a defin­ing mo­ment in her writ­ing process with Dame Warn­er.

“When my first nov­el, The Past is An­oth­er Coun­try, reached 110,000 words, I told my su­per­vi­sor, Dame Ma­ri­na Warn­er, that I feared it was be­com­ing too un­wieldy. She said, ‘A book is its own crea­ture, and it will tell you when it’s done grow­ing.’ I re­alised then that my role was not to tame the book but to let it find its own shape.”

At the core of her work is a deeply per­son­al reck­on­ing.

“Writ­ing be­gins in si­lence, though nev­er tru­ly qui­et,” Marx re­flects. “I need still­ness, yet in­side me, voic­es press for­ward—char­ac­ters, frag­ments, un­fin­ished thoughts. The page is un­cer­tain, and I am un­cer­tain about it. But the act of writ­ing, its slow per­sis­tence, brings clar­i­ty and makes sense of the dark.”

A med­i­ta­tion on mem­o­ry, iden­ti­ty, and the af­ter­shocks of his­to­ry, The Past is An­oth­er Coun­try ex­plores what is lost and what can be re­claimed. With echoes of In­her­i­tance by Dani Shapiro and The Hare with Am­ber Eyes by Ed­mund de Waal, it in­ter­ro­gates the weight of the past—how much of it we car­ry, how much we un­know­ing­ly re­peat.

Ex­cerpt from The Past is An­oth­er Coun­try by Mar­cel­la Marx:

“Grand­pa Vas­co’s loud voice reach­es me in the bath­room. He’s not call­ing out for me. He’s scream­ing at the top of his lungs. Grand­pa isn’t a scream­er and for this rea­son, the sound makes my heart bounce in my chest. I run with­out flush­ing and try to leave the house through the side door but it’s locked. I dash to the liv­ing room chas­ing the sound of Grand­pa’s voice which now re­sem­bles the moan­ing of the whale in Gep­pet­to, my favourite car­toon. I jump on the couch and lift the cur­tain to look out­side, catch­ing a glimpse of a fire­ball—a flam­ing torch—a me­te­or like the ones I saw in Dona Celi­na’s class about plan­ets and stars.

Dona Celi­na ex­plained to us that stars pro­duce their own light where­as plan­ets just re­flect the light of an­oth­er star. Pa­pai is a star to­day. The light he pro­duces is so in­tense that I crouch down, hid­ing be­hind the back­rest to pro­tect my eyes.

Every­one out­side is shout­ing. I raise my head again with my ears cov­ered and I see Grand­pa jump­ing on top of Pa­pai who is ly­ing on the floor while flames run over him. For a mo­ment, I won­der if they’re play­ing a game, but as I con­tin­ue watch­ing I un­der­stand it’s no game un­less it’s a game no one is en­joy­ing. Grand­pa rolls over Pa­pai back and forth and pats the spark­ing flames. Every­one is silent now, ex­cept Pa­pai.

I fol­low the burn­ing smell that takes me through the kitchen door all the way to the front yard. Grand­pa is stand­ing next to Pa­pai who is still ly­ing down. Grand­pa’s shirt is all burnt-ripped. There are so many holes in it that it looks like the fish­ing net Sen­hor José, the fish­er­man, showed us dur­ing our school trip to São Vi­cente.

Through the holes, I can see Grand­pa’s skin is cov­ered in black ash and patch­es of red. I pinch my nose to avoid the smell that grows stronger as I walk to­wards Pa­pai. His face is so full of folds that it seems a hole will open up in the mid­dle of his fore­head and suck him in.

Some peo­ple are mov­ing in slow mo­tion, like Mamãe, oth­ers, like Grand­ma and Grand­pa, are mov­ing fast-for­ward. I’m nei­ther. Like Pa­pai, I’m freeze-framed, think­ing: who is go­ing to save him? And hop­ing he can be saved.

Every­one de­cides to speak at the same time—Mamãe asks what Pa­pai was think­ing, and how he could be so ir­re­spon­si­ble; Grand­ma asks why Pa­pai need­ed to use gaso­line and, worse, so close to the drain where he wouldn’t be able to see it in case it dripped, and it did drip; Grand­pa says it was a mis­take all along to burn the dead cat, and he had told him so.

Then Grand­pa be­gins telling us about this day in Italy dur­ing the war when a flamethrow­er caught one of his com­rades in the trench­es. ‘His whole body caught on fire and I had to roll on top of him the same way I did to­day. But my com­rade wasn’t as lucky as you,’ Grand­pa says, look­ing at Dad. Grand­ma tells him to shut up, it’s not the time for his war sto­ries. Every­one gets qui­et when Pa­pai starts cry­ing. He isn’t strong enough to re­ply to any­one. I won­der if his rolling tears sting his open skin like my scratched knees when Mamãe ap­plies Merthi­o­late on them. “

I’m star­ing at the ground next to him try­ing to find the drain Grand­pa was talk­ing about, where the fire start­ed. But I can on­ly see pieces of burnt plas­tic and fur. A strong draft makes the black dust land on us and sud­den­ly we’re all look­ing like we’ve been pow­dered black. I’m try­ing to breathe as lit­tle as pos­si­ble not to in­hale the dead cat mixed with Pa­pai’s skin and hair.

The yard floor at Grand­pa and Grand­ma’s house is made of tiny pink tiles glued to­geth­er form­ing the most weird shapes. I liked imag­in­ing what they could be—a li­on, a ted­dy do­ing a hand­stand, a he­li­copter. But to­day, for the first time, I can­not see them, they’re all cov­ered in soot. It looks as if we are stand­ing in the black hole Dona Celi­na taught us about—a place in space where no one can es­cape from, its mag­net­ic pow­er suck­ing us in.”

–End of ex­cerpt.

Mar­cel­la Marx’s short fic­tion has re­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion. A fi­nal­ist for the Rest­less Books Prize for New Im­mi­grant Writ­ing (2024) and the Ten­nessee Williams & New Or­leans Lit­er­ary Prize (2023), she has al­so been short­list­ed for the Guardian 4th Es­tate Prize (2024) and longlist­ed for the Berlin Writ­ing Prize (2022). Her short sto­ry Ice­berg Grand­pa will ap­pear in The Geor­gia Re­view in 2025. Marx is cur­rent­ly at work on her sec­ond nov­el.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.

Au­thor in­quiries: iras­room@gmail.com