THE SUMMER I KILLED MY FATHER

A novel that, in a beautifully evocative voice,dissects the secrets of a family shaped by war,silence, and the longing to understand.

Writer Anna Argall reconstructs her childhood and adolescence,shaped by a loving yet authoritarian father who was a doctor, a distant and ambivalent mother, and the central, indispensable figure of Ença. Through fragmented memories, she gradually uncovers her family’s story across the twentieth century—its buried longings, hidden secrets, and the lasting weight of the
Spanish Civil War—all of which converge in one summer, when Anna dreamed every night that she killed her father.
Ença’s death, the loss of the person Anna loved most in the family, sets in motion a deeply personal act of writing that traces the many threads connecting generations through the worlds of medicine, sewing, and herbalism. In doing so, Anna weaves together the fabric of her own life, exploring memory, guilt, and reconciliation.