Portrait of an Unknown Lady
  • Published: 1 March 2022
  • ISBN: 9781787303249
  • Imprint: Harvill Secker
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $35.00

Portrait of an Unknown Lady

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
1 Mar 2022
EBook
3 Mar 2022
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In this dazzling story of art and illusion, secrets and schemes, who is to be trusted - and what is real? From the internationally acclaimed author of Optic Nerve, a New York Times Notable Book 2019

At a hotel in Buenos Aires, a woman checks in under a pseudonym. She wears a black fur shawl and has no luggage. She is alone.

Over the coming days and nights, she tells a story, which begins with a secret shared in a local bath house, revealing art forgery and fraud on a dazzling scale. At its heart is an enigmatic genius who for years forged portraits of the city's elite, before disappearing without trace. It is a story of influence and intrigue, in which nothing is as it seems. We're not to expect 'names, numbers or dates', she cautions, but a more subtle kind of reckoning...

Told in a mordant, irresistible voice and full of sharp surprises, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a captivating enquiry into what we mean by 'authenticity', in life as in art. At once poised and capricious, elegant and bold, it is a thrilling exploration of the relationships between what is lived, what is told, what is remembered, and what is real.
  • Published: 1 March 2022
  • ISBN: 9781787303249
  • Imprint: Harvill Secker
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $35.00
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About the author

Maria Gainza

María Gainza was born in Buenos Aires, where she still lives. She has worked as a correspondent for The New York Times in Buenos Aires, as well as for ArtNews. For more than ten years she was a regular contributor to the magazine
Artforum and Radar, the cultural supplement of Página/12. She has given courses for artists and art critic workshops and was a co-editor of the collection Los Sentidos (The Senses) on Argentinean art.

Praise for Portrait of an Unknown Lady

'Vividly detailed and saturated with intricate feeling, Gainza's novel is an engrossing exploration of authenticity, obsession, and the enveloping allure of art'

Alexandra Kleeman, author of SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

This is a truly exquisite novel... It is moving, clever and written wry precision... As much as the narrator is haunted, the reader will be haunted

Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

Gainza weaves a fascinating, often confounding story about beauty, obsession and authenticity... Gainza is sharp, modern and playful, a writer who multiples the possibilities of fiction

Johanna Thomas-Corr, Observer

A richly detailed detective novel of sorts that explores authenticity and the distance between the way things appear and they way they really are

Chiara Rimella, Monocle

Dazzling... [a] clever novel that explores the gap between what's remembered and what's real

Chloë Ashby, Spectator

[A] dazzling novel about art and authenticity... the novel packs a huge amount into its 208 pages. If the reader is never quite sure what's fact and what's fiction, that's just part of the fun

John Self, Guardian

Wonderful... Gainza is fast becoming one of Argentina's most sophisticated writers thanks to the imaginative twirls her writing takes

Times Literary Supplement

A delight

Scotsman, *Summer Reads of 2022*

Unsettling, super-sophisticated games with the unsaid and unsayable

Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*