Narrator Wonderful land (Paripébooks, 2025), the third novel by Argentine publisher and writer Ana Wajszuk (Quelmez, 50), forms part of one of those many couples who have arrived at the trinta and cultivated it for a long time in the last decade, and find themselves searching for a child without achieving it. If you can decide that wanting to have grandchildren when biology plays against it is a great contemporary topic. However, this has only been explored in the literature, as if infertility or resorting to assisted reproductive clinics were a taboo and taboo topic from within.
“When I started thinking about writing this book, after going through a process similar to what happened to the protagonist, I found many novels on the topic of fertility and the difficulties one encounters on the path to assisted reproduction. I was surprised, because it seemed to me to be a very rich topic, but nevertheless, it has an aura like a home topic, there is no talk about it, and I think it is still difficult to jump into literature, the step from testimony to literary text.” He recognizes Wajszczuk from Argentina in a phone conversation.
p. The hero of the series continues to try again and again, despite all the disappointments, to achieve the long-awaited embarrassment.
A. Science, at this point, opens up so many possibilities, that I don’t want to decide it’s a good idea to take them. It is possible and desirable, and not always the same path, but suppose we lived in a world where everything seemed possible. That’s why the topic of infertility seems so literary to me, because it poses a universal question, which is where are you willing to get one to achieve what you desire, in this case a child. What is my moral limit? What is my emotional limit? Where can I help? How long can you keep a couple without breaking up in the process?
p. The couple finally chose to ovulate. If infertility is a taboo topic on the inside, ovulation does exist. summary Taboo.
A. These assisted reproductive techniques force you to ask yourself things you might not have asked at other times. And it seems to me that this is also something of great value for literature. The issue of identity, genes, and the right of children and children who are perceived to know their genetic origin. It seemed important to me to include it in the book because I think it is a topic that is rarely discussed. We need to talk more about these ethical and personal uncertainties of those facing a couple deciding to bring a child into the world through techniques such as ovulation.
p. There comes a moment when we don’t know whether there is a real desire to be a mother or if the narrator feels that this is something that should happen…
A. What makes it difficult for me to write this book is, precisely, that it is often impossible to uncover the desire to delegate. We are social and interconnected beings, and in the end we cannot separate our desires from the era in which we must live, from the era that does not allow it. I think today we have the qualifications not to be mothers. Maybe 50 years ago, this was a topic women couldn’t question. And yet, at the same time, the idea of not being a mother is still very much in the old states, the idea that you’re not a complete woman if you’re not a mother. I think something like this also exists in the heroine in her desire to be a mother.
p. This dilemma between desire and agency also plays a role in the couple.
A. That’s it Many couples end up separating because they cannot have children. But there are also many who break up after they have managed to do so, because they cannot cope with it, because one does not know oneself as a mother or the priest does not succeed her, and this also often causes a division between the spouses. And I am here because I do not feel comfortable because he has a sin, but rather for everyone who discovers himself and the person who is there when the priest leaves. Specifically, one of the things that seemed interesting for me to work on in the book is the distance between what one imagines motherhood or fatherhood is versus what comes out of reality. There is no human experience as far between fantasy and reality as motherhood.
p. The second part of the book deals, in fact, with the reality of the motherhood experience. There is no shortage of contradiction.
A. A few weeks ago we were in Barcelona and I was told a very strange story. We were eating on a terrace in the city center when a tour bus caught fire a few meters away. At that moment, I did not think about my husband, about the friends who were with us, about us carrying valuables in the backpacks that we dug out of the dirt. The first thing I did was grab my daughter and put me inside the restaurant with her. I was the only one who thought so. Then, in other moments of the trip, he left me that day asking me: “Why are you coming with the girl on this trip, I’m going crazy?” (He laughs).
p. “If I wanted to have a child from then on, I wouldn’t go back to it,” reflects the protagonist at the end of the book. But the book ends with the couple seeking their second embarrassment. Is there something crazy and reckless about maternity leave?
A. Yes. Something similar happens when someone falls madly in love or feels a great desire to do something. These things are inexplicable, in the sense that one knows that they lead to complications and problems, but one cannot resist their urge. I have seen it among many friends, who in the midst of all this chaos say that they do not want to return to this place, and yet, the desire to have children resurfaces. It seems to me that it is a very beautiful thing, in a world where calculation and comfort intersect, to be able to bet on something that is precisely the opposite of calculation and comfort, which is in motherhood, in love or in vocation. I believe that if there is one thing that continues to save us as human beings, it is these decisions that we make without calculation.