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It began with a drowning. Deep in the heart and soul of Mexico City, where five residences cluster around a sun-drenched courtyard, lives Ana, a precocious 12-year-old still arriving to terms with the inexplicable loss of life of her little sister years before. Over the rainy, smoggy summer time, she makes a decision to place a vegetable garden in the courtyard, as she digs the bottom and plant life her seeds, her neighbors subsequently delve into their pasts. As the ripple effects of grief, childlessness, condition and displacement saturate their stories, secrets seep out, and questions emerge: who was my partner? Why did my mommy leave? MAY I turn back the clock? And exactly how could a woman who recognized how to swim drown? Using five voices to see the singular account of life within an inner-city mews, Umami is a quietly devastating novel of overlooked encounters, overlooked opportunities, overlooked people and the ones who are left behind. Compassionate, amazing, funny and inventive, it deftly unpicks their stories to give you a darkly comic portrait of modern Mexico, as whimsical as it is heart-wrenching. Laia Jufresa was created in Mexico City, was raised in the cloud forest of Veracruz and put in her adolescence in Paris. In 2001 she delivered to Mexico City and uncovered she didn't know how to cross a street. She's been writing fiction since. Laia's work has been included in a number of anthologies and periodicals, such as Letras Libres, Pencil Atlas, Words Without Borders and McSweeney's, and she was named one of the very most outstanding young writers in Mexico as part of the job Mexico20. In 2015 she was invited by the English Council to be the first ever International Copy writer in Residence at the Hay Festivity of Books. She currently lives in Cologne, Germany.
