Philosophical Toys

Nina, a drifter from southern Spain comes to London in search of experience, only to find that the strangest of stories is hiding in her father’s loft in America...

A playfully concocted, fast-paced novel committed to the irresistible pleasure of reading, both a celebration and a critique of our relationship to objects (from fetishes, to curios, to commodities, to objectum sexuality, to our becoming cyborgs through our addiction to technology), Philosophical Toys travels through different times, countries and experiences as chance leads Nina to encounter time and again the enigmatic nature of things, which end up transforming her into that most rare of species: a female philosopher.

Witty and elegiac, Philosophical Toys takes the reader on a tour of fetishism, late capitalist culture, Buñuel’s films, psychoanalysis, Alzheimer’s disease, as well as the avatars of belonging to two cultures, an experience increasingly shared by a myriad of expatriates.

Susana Medina is the author of Red Tales (bilingual edition, co-translated with Rosie Marteau), the poetry and aphorisms collection Souvenirs del Accidente and the short films Buñuel’s Philosophical Toys and Leather-bound Stories (co-directed with Derek Ogbourne). She has been awarded The Max Aub International Short Story Prize and a writing grant from the Arts Council of England for her novel Spinning Days of Night. Her story ＂Oestrogen,＂ translated by Rosie Marteau, featured in Best European Fiction, 2014, from Dalkey Archive Press.