Description

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In this moving family saga, a teenage woman uncovers the hushed history of sexual violence that shattered her grandmother’s life.

Buenos Aires, 2001. When Vilma passes away, few friends and relatives care to attend her funeral. This conspicuous absence sparks the curiosity of her 19-year-old granddaughter, Rocio, who moves into the house her grandmother has left her. In this home haunted by memories, she delves into Vilma’s life and uncovers a family history shrouded in tragedy.

Moving seamlessly between Italy at the beginning of the 20th century and Argentina at the beginning of the 21st century, Mothballs draws a poetic comparison between the lives of grandmother and granddaughter. Both women are strong-willed and ambitious, eager to forge their own way, but face pressure from family and society to conform to the paths set for them. At a crossroads in her own life, knowing well the isolation her grandmother felt, Rocio seeks to break free from the chain of history. Mothballs chronicles fraught family dynamics with rare nuance and sensitivity, sprinkling in moments of tenderness, vulnerability, and whimsy amidst the pain, a showcase of tour de force cartooning that marks Sole Otero as a major talent in the global comics scene.

About the Author

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Sole Otero (b. 1985, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a comic artist, children’s illustrator, and textile designer. She has published the graphic novels Poncho Fue, Intensa, and most recently Naftalina (Mothballs), which won the Fnac-Salamandra Graphic Novel Award in 2019 and the Audience Award from the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2023.

Andrea Rosenberg is a translator who has worked on a variety of novels and graphic narratives in Spanish and Portuguese. Her translations of the graphic novels Run For It by Marcelo D’Salete and The House by Paco Roca won Eisner Awards in 2018 and 2020, respectively.

Praise For…

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Otero's Mothballs is an unflinching look at family, love and choosing your own path. It stayed with me long after I read it.

— Eleanor Davis (The Hard Tomorrow)

Mothballs is a profound, captivating work, which does not give the reader a minute of respite and which tells us about family, guilt, fears and the search for a way that prevents repeating the mistakes of the past, and with which Sole Otero has a profound impact also thanks to a very colorful image.

— Jon Spinaro - El Diario de Navarra

An exciting and colorful reflection on family and identity.
— Gemma Veiga - Elle Spain

Sole Otero recounts her dive into the tragedies of her family, against the backdrop of Argentina in the crisis of 2001.
— Tommaso Koch - El País

A majestic book that portrays the tribulations of a family saga that moves between Italy at the beginning of the 20th century and Argentina at the beginning of the 21st. A sharp reflection on the concept of family and what surrounds it.
— Borja Crespo - El Correo