The Adventures of China Iron - Paperback

by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (Author), Iona MacIntyre (Translator), Fiona Mackintosh (Translator)

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020

1872. The pampas of Argentina. China is a young woman eking out an existence in a remote gaucho encampment. After her no-good husband is conscripted into the army, China bolts for freedom, setting off on a wagon journey through the pampas in the company of her new-found friend Liz, a settler from Scotland. While Liz provides China with a sentimental education and schools her in the nefarious ways of the British Empire, their eyes are opened to the wonders of Argentina's richly diverse flora and fauna, cultures and languages, as well as to the ruthless violence involved in nation-building.

This subversive retelling of Argentina's foundational gaucho epic Martín Fierro is a celebration of the colour and movement of the living world, the open road, love and sex, and the dream of lasting freedom. With humour and sophistication, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara has created a joyful, hallucinatory novel that is also an incisive critique of national myths.

Author Biography

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara was born in Buenos Aires in 1968. Her debut novel Slum Virgin (Charco, 2017) was followed by Romance de la negra rubia (Romance of the Blonde Brunette ) as well as by two collections of short stories. In 2011 she published the novella Le viste la cara a Dios (You've Seen God's Face ), later turned into a graphic novel, Beya (Biutiful ), illustrated by Iñaki Echeverría. In 2013, she was Writer-in-Residence at the University of California, Berkeley. The Adventures of China Iron, published by Charco Press in 2020, was shortlisted for the International Booker and the Médicis prizes. In addition to being an environmental activist, Cabezón Cámara is one of the leading feminist and LGBTQ+ intellectuals in Latin America. Her most recent novel is We Are Green and Trembling .

Iona Macintyre is a Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Iona's teaching and research has focused on nineteenth-century Spanish American history and culture. Within this area she works primarily on Argentina, history of the book, translation studies, gender studies and transatlantic relations. She has also published on the contemporary fiction of Jorge Accame.

Fiona Mackintosh is a Senior Lecturer in Latin American Literature at the University of Edinburgh with research interests in contemporary Latin American fiction and poetry (particularly from Argentina), and literary translation. She has published extensively on Alejandra Pizarnik, Silvina Ocampo and Claudia Piñeiro. Her co-translation of_The Adventures of China Iron_ by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. She recently translated Clara Obligado's_All that Grows: Nature and Writing_ (X Artists' Books, 2025).