The History of the Vertebrate
Mar García Puig author Mara Faye Lethem translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Peninsula Press Ltd
Publishing:2nd Apr '26
£13.99
This title is due to be published on 2nd April, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
‘On 20 December 2015 I became a mother and I went mad.’
On a single day, Mar García Puig gives birth to twins and becomes elected to the Spanish Parliament as a member of the insurgent left-wing party Podemos. What might have been the best day of her life becomes the start of a terrifying ordeal, as Puig’s grip on reality begins to slip as she grapples with uncertainty, the weight of expectation, and misogyny in both of her new roles.
The History of the Vertebrate offers a searing account of postpartum psychosis. In defiance of a culture that tells her the problem lies within, Puig chooses to look outwards, examining the imbrication of madness and motherhood across centuries of science, myth, and politics while dissecting the ways in which women have been pathologized and banished from public life.
The History of the Vertebrate is at once intimate and monumental. Moving between memory, culture, and the history of medicine, Puig transforms her experience into a story about the countless women who have felt that sanity was leaving them, and about the patriarchal forces that have silenced them.
‘A wonderful hybrid book, as monumental as it is intimate. Her words resonate simultaneously with our political and poetic sensibility: with The History of the Vertebrate, all of us crazy women understand the reason behind our melancholy, and we start to sing.’ Marta Sanz
‘“Freedom is therapeutic,” someone wrote on the wall of an abandoned madhouse. That inscription is projected onto Mar García Puig’s extraordinarily liberated book, as well conceived as it is executed. A powerful testimony of her experience of puerperal madness. A delirious and sane tapestry that weaves in various directions.’ Enrique Vila-Matas
‘About the madness of mothers, their weaknesses and their strengths, often two sides of the same coin. An erudite book, tender and tough, and always honest.’ Katixa Agirre
‘A unique, brave, and amazing book that ties together the intimate and the historical, the familiar and the mythological, poetry and politics, love and pain, madness and lucidity, to delicately illuminate one of the darkest faces of motherhood.’ Isaac Rosa
‘An intimate story of the thunderous explosion of affections that motherhood means, a story that is in turn political. Mar García Puig gives us the gift of her powerful experiences as a new mother and a new deputy, and with them she traces a link with literature, theatre, philosophy and art throughout the centuries. It is impossible not to be reminded of Deborah Levy’s or Maggie Nelson’s memoirs.’ Luna Miguel
ISBN: 9781913512859
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
192 pages