Non-fiction Book Club Reads ‘undiscovered’ by Gabriela Wiener

Our book group is open to all. Attend every meeting, occasionally or just once in your life. All we ask is that you read the book in advance and take part in the discussion. There’s a short introduction by a member of staff, a group regular, or someone we know with a special interest in the book in question.

A controversial pick for this club- described as ‘genre-defying’, written by a journalist, this book has been marketed as an autobiographical novel and personal creative non-fiction. Why not pi

THE BOOK

In an ethnographic museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener is confronted with her unusual inheritance. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artefacts, the spoils of European colonial plunder. As she peers through the glass, she sees sculptures of Indigenous faces that resemble her own – but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener.

In the wake of her father’s death, Gabriela begins delving into all she has inherited from her paternal line. From the brutal trail of racism and theft that Charles left behind to revelations of her father’s infidelity, she traces a legacy of abandonment, jealousy and colonial violence, in turn reframing her own struggles with desire, love and race. Seeking relief from these personal and historical wounds, Gabriela turns to the body and desire as sources of both constraint and potential freedom.

Blending personal, historical and fictional writing, Undiscovered tells of a search for identity beyond the old stories of patriarchs and plunder. Subversive, intimate and fiercely irreverent, it builds to a powerful call for decolonization.

“An intimate story from the family archive that is also the infamous history of our continent”– Valeria Luiselli, author of ‘Lost Children Archive’

THE AUTHOR

Gabriela Wiener is a Peruvian writer and journalist based in Madrid who won Peru’s National Journalism Award for her investigative report on violence against women.