La Última Palabra (The Last Word)
Alia Trabucco Zerán

La Última Palabra (The Last Word), a short story by Chilean writer Alia Trabucco Zerán looks at the childhood game of resonances and echoes called The Telephone in Chile, The Broken Telephone in Argentina, and Chinese Whisperers in the UK. The story came about from an obsessive image that formed in Alia’s mind – an image of blushing – as a result of thinking about the resounding of words. What is blushing? How come words can cause something as visual as blushing? Is blushing the echo of words in our bodies? Is blushing the result of a word that, all of a sudden, wants to have a physical presence?

La Última Palabra (The Last Word) was published  in the original Spanish alongside the English translation by Sophie Hughes in the print publication Resonance 1 on 1 September 2019.

Alia Trabucco Zerán (Santiago, 1983) is a Chilean writer. Her debut novel, The Remainder, translated into English by Sophie Hughes, was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and won the Best Novel Award of the Chilean Council for the Arts. Her new book, Las Homicidas (2019), is a non-fiction account of how society portrays violent women. She lives between Santiago and London and is currently working on a new novel.

Sophie Hughes is a literary translator from Spanish to English. She is known for her translations of contemporary writers such as Laia Jufresa, Rodrigo Hasbún, José Revueltas and Enrique Vila-Matas. Her translation of Alia Trabucco Zerán’s The Remainder was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.