Sobre la recepción de Las madres no de Katixa Agirre. Maternidad y narración en los sistemas literarios vasco y castellano

Abstract

This article analyses the positive reception of Katixa Agirre’s novel Las madres no. In order to contextualise these considerations, we will briefly present the writer’s career up to this point, and we will offer a brief narrative analysis of the novel. Finally, we will trace some possible explanations for the favourable reception of the book Las madres no among Spanish-speaking readers and critics: the originality of the text and the chosen subgenre (the crime thriller); the recent boom of publications on the topic of motherhood in Spanish and Latin-American recent literatures; and also the role played by the publishing house, Tránsito Libros, an independent and fairly young company with a strong presence in social networks which has attracted some enthusiastic followers within the Spanish readership. The combination of these different elements may explain why Las madres no has received more attention than other works by the same author, and by other Basque writers who have been translated into Spanish.