Even the Birds

Winner of the 2025 Guernica Prize for Literary Fiction

Peace has come to Guatemala after thirty-six years of war. Isabel, a guerrilla fighter of mixed Mayan and non-Indigenous heritage, returns from battle to the daughter she left in the care of her conservative aunt many years before. Soraida, afraid to lose the child she has raised, begrudgingly welcomes her rebel niece into her home, an arrangement that forces her to question her own role in the country’s conflict. Isabel struggles to be the mother her daughter needs, but orphaned very young and marked by the war, she is not sure what that would be. Fifteen-year-old Yasmin faces problems of her own. The trio’s commitment to each other falters, but it also evolves. And whether out of duty or out of love, they may yet help each other find peace—and even happiness—in their still deeply divided country.

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