The Mesa Collection
by Sara Mesa
£22.00
The Mesa collection comprises two novels by Spanish novelist Sara Mesa, both translated by Katie Whittemore: Un Amor (2024) and Four by Four (2025).
Save 15% on the individual prices of the books by buying the collection.
A claustrophobic story of desire and small town unease in the vein of Dogville or Coetzee’s Disgrace.
Fleeing from past mistakes, Nat leaves her life in the city for the rural village of La Escapa. She rents a small house from a negligent landlord, adopts a dog and begins to work on her first literary translation. But nothing is easy: the dog is ill tempered and skittish and misunderstandings with her neighbour’s thrum below the surface. When conflict arises over repairs to her house, Nat receives an unusual offer – one that tests her sense of self, challenges her prejudices, and reveals her most unexpected desires. As Nat tries to understand her decision, the community of La Escapa comes together in search of a scapegoat.
Now a feature film, directed by Isabel Coixet.
Selected as the ‘Best Book of 2020’ by El País, La Vanguardia, El Cultural and El Correo. Shortlisted by El Mundo, Forbes, Elle, W Magazine and La Nueva España.
176pp, paperback with flaps, £12.99
ISBN978-1-908670-97-7
Publication date: 4 June 2024
At Wybrany College, there are two kinds of student: the children of the rich and powerful, and the ‘Specials’ – recipients of a mysterious scholarship. Sealed off from the decaying world outside, the school promises safety, order and, for the Specials, the chance of a different life. But when one of them disappears, the illusion begins to crack. Hidden hierarchies shift. The line between protector and predator blurs.
250pp, paperback with flaps, £12.99
ISBN: 978-1-916806-10-8
Publication date: 12 August 2025
Press & Reviews
‘Sara Mesa’s writing is mysterious and fascinating: her characters brush against the limits in environments of fierce false calm.’ – Mariana Enríquez, author of Our Share of Night and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
‘Sara Mesa sees the world through the lens of power, exploring how questions of strength and weakness shape human behaviour...Her writing has an unnerving force: with a single sentence, she can reveal the darkness at the heart of a situation like a lens sliding silently, suddenly into focus.’ – Annie McDermott, The Times Literary Supplement
‘Sara Mesa’s deft control and economy of language shouldn’t come as a surprise. She’s a poet. Her nouns are razored. Her verbs are explosive … If you haven’t read her, you should. She won’t waste your time.’ – European Literary Review
‘When I read Sara Mesa, I’m there in the Wild West, sifting through the sand. There is a restless enjoyment, an inhospitable beauty, in my sieve. And then something miraculous when gold appears before my eyes.’ – Eva Baltasar, author of Boulder
‘A complex critique of love, lust, power, and human society.’ – World Literature Today
‘A meticulously constructed and chilling study of desire and influence.’ – Kirkus Reviews
‘[An] intriguingly ambiguous tale of autonomy and power.’ – Marie Claire, Best New Books of 2024
‘Mesa’s work is tense, intimate, and unsettling … we can’t look away.’ – Literary Hub
‘One of the writers of my generation that I admire the most. Sara does not feed the fashionable conversation nor does she care about other people's opinions. Sara's only commitment is to her own, excellent, literature.’ – Manuel Astur, author of Of Saints and Miracles
‘The fascination of Mesa's writing is in the closeness of her attention – she attends to all the complex weather of human feeling, allows her characters to go where they will – where, it feels to the reader, they inexorably must, despite the surprise and strangeness of their circumstances. Un Amor is a romance that reads like a thriller, a small-town intrigue that is consuming and essential. Such is the quiet intensity of La Escapa and the novel that inhabits it, the world beyond begins to blur – could almost disappear.’ – Martha Sprackland, author of Citadel and Milk Tooth
About The Book
Translator
Katie Whittemore is graduate of the University of NH (BA), Cambridge University (M.Phil), and Middlebury College (MA), and was a 2018 Bread Loaf Translators Conference participant. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming with Two Lines, The Arkansas International, The Common Online, Gulf Coast Magazine Online, The Los Angeles Review, The Brooklyn Rail and InTranslation.
