The Sense of Darkness — Cinzia De Santis

A world of intimacy, of smell and touch, is all Clara knows. Her blindness doesn't bother her: she is gifted with an extraordinary sense of smell which guides her through life. Raised by her aunt Trinidad in a small village in Latin America, Clara becomes a renowned healer. She can smell people's diseases and can heal them with her particular recipes. Their lives fall apart when members of a guerrilla gang bring to their home a wounded prisoner whom Clara has to heal. While she struggles to understand the feelings he produces in her, Trinidad's past returns, carrying the power of an obsessive love, but, will it be enough to save hers and Clara's lives? "...it is a story about love and magic - touched by the narrative power that Venezuelan writers can have - and also a fable that make us remember that the most important things are seen by the heart and not by the eyes" Javier Puebla, Cambio16