Winner of the 2024 Premio Lumen. An intimate yet universal journey through the author’s memories, her family, her homeland—Belarus—and her migration to Argentina. A moving historical portrait that delicately explores themes such as illness, love, human connections… and, above all, the true meaning of coming home.
In 1986, Natalia Litvinova was born in Belarus, the same year the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded. Thirty years later, Natalia is a writer going through a separation and moves back in with her mother. There, she comes across objects that transport her back to her childhood home in Gomel, Belarus, and begins to share that past with her mother—just as her mother is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Through autofiction, the author recounts her childhood in Belarus and her later emigration to Argentina, blending the everyday with the poetic.
In Belarus, the tragic consequences of Chernobyl are part of daily life: children eat radioactive fruit, the Stalinist government hides the dangers of radiation, and poverty and despair deepen until Natalia’s mother decides to emigrate to Argentina.
Once there, ten-year-old Natalia finds that the difficulties do not disappear—they simply change. At school, she and her brother are bullied as easy targets, her mother is ridiculed for not speaking Spanish well, and her father becomes obsessed with the idea that Nazis surround them. They are swindled out of all their savings. The couple’s arguments escalate until Natalia’s father decides to return to Belarus, where he dies just days after her fifteenth birthday.
Natalia says she writes so that her mother can, in some way, walk forever, and she ends the novel admiring a photo of her mother smiling—taken before the Chernobyl disaster, before knowing all that it would mean for their lives.
RELEVANT INFORMATION: Firefly (Luciérnaga) by Natalia Litvinova was one of the most important novels in Spanish-language literature in 2024. Winner of the Premio Lumen de Novela and chosen as one of the 50 best books of 2024 by Babelia, the novel honors the memory of her family and captivates readers with strong, authentic female characters and a poetic, emotional narrative voice.
Possible film references include Still Alice, for its portrayal of illness, or The Pianist, for its dramatic depiction of the consequences of tragedy in a person’s life.
Natalia Litvinova is a poet and editor. She lives in Buenos Aires, where she teaches poetry workshops, and has published several books. Her work has been published in multiple countries, including Germany, France, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and the United States. Luciérnaga is her first novel.
Critics say:
“Therapy in the form of words for a society that had to live through silence and ignorance. But Litvinova is much more: she is intensity, poetry, feminism, and an inspiration to other women within and beyond literature.” — El Español
“Singular […]. Litvinova portrays two countries through lyricism, with a subtle sense of humor and a simple style […], at times sad and always moving.” — El Cultural
“A brilliant novel in every sense. […] A wonderful hodgepodge that a very special voice channels with impeccable rhythm.” — The Objective
AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV series, Miniseries, Film, TV Film.
AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish.
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