Carlota Fainberg
I just finished this novella by Antonio Muñoz Molina. Here is the review I left on Goodreads:
Claudio, an associate professor at Humbert College, hoping to be appointed full professor soon, is on his way to Buenos Aires to present a paper on a poem by Borges, Blind Pew. At the airport in Pittsburgh, his flight is delayed by a blizzard. He meets a fellow Spaniard, Marcelo, who tells him in great detail about the torrid affair he had in BA a few years back.
This short, multilayered novella about the power of narrative weaves together different themes: there’s the contrast between intellectual, fastidious Claudio, and matter-of-fact, macho Marcelo. There is the mysterious femme fatale, Carlota. Who/what is she? And there is the contrast between the reality of Claudio’s clash at the conference with a feminist lesbian scholar and the irreality of the encounter between Marcelo and Carlota, with its heterosexual tropes and toxic masculinity.
And then there is Claudio’s fondness for the poems of Borges, that he recites to himself as he walks through the streets of Buenos Aires.
I think that my next stop will be Borges and his poems.
Impostora 