One of many marginalised workers speaks out

This is the sixth item in our 2026 culture special with reviews of artists' works with developmental relevance.

Estela García is 40 years old and has her own view of the world: of the people, plants and animals around her in present-day Santiago de Chile; of her mother, who lives far away in the countryside; of the well-to-do family of three in whose house she has been working as a maid for years, taking care of the cleaning, washing, cooking, sewing and ironing. Estela has a story to tell, yet for the most part she remains silent, invisible and lonely on the inside – trapped always in her role as a recipient of instructions.

It’s not that she’s treated unlawfully by the family – he’s a doctor, his wife works in a timber company, and their school-age daughter is ambitious. Yet by constantly making her feel inferior, they systematically deny her any real substance or significance: though their daughter’s first word is “Nana” – a reference to Estela’s role as a nanny – her mother reports to her husband that she said “Mama”. 

hen Estela dares to try on a dress belonging to her mistress, she is immediately asked to wash it. If the child uses a grammatically incorrect expression, the maid is blamed and told off. There are also racist elements to this marginalisation: when her mother is putting on her make-up, the girl wants to know why she doesn’t lend her cosmetics to Estela – to make her darker skin appear “clean and white”.

Estela breaks her silence only when she’s arrested, giving an account of the family’s home life during an interrogation. She reports to an audience of supposed listeners beyond the walls of her cell, telling them repeatedly to listen carefully and take note of the most important details. It’s also as if she is addressing the reader, a literary device that lends the tale huge immediacy and urgency.

One fact that is disclosed right at the beginning of the novel and repeatedly serves as a reference point also warrants a mention here: the girl dies – in circumstances that the book leaves unclear for a long time. The desire to find out how this could have happened accounts for a good part of the novel’s tension, especially as Alia Trabucco Zerán keeps giving away seemingly incidental clues. What role might perhaps be played by rat poison and a revolver? 

Consequences of social inequality 

However, the whole issue of social inequality that the book raises is more important than the matter of “whodunit”. ­Estela represents an entire army of maids who toil to ensure that daily life proceeds as smoothly as possible for their privileged employers in Latin America and elsewhere. On the family’s television, workers complain about the tough economic situation in the country. Estela is one of them, but she also wants to be acknowledged as a human being.

Alia Trabucco Zerán uses precise language to expose the hardships of the protagonist’s everyday life. Doing the shopping for those better off than herself, sorting through their dirty laundry, cleaning the toilet, day in, day out, while she herself has to make do with a small room with a sliding door: Estela is at risk of losing her sense of her own identity and indeed of reality itself, while the lives of the family she works for spiral headlong towards disaster.

Superficially, the book consists solely of Estela’s lengthy monologue in her interrogation cell. However, what is intended as a plea for her innocence ultimately becomes an accusation itself: Estela raises her voice to protest against inhumanity, injustice and being overlooked.

Novel
Trabucco Zerán, A., 2024:
Clean. Fourth Estate. Translated by Sophie Hughes. The original was published in 2022 under the name “Limpia”. 
A film adaption entitled “Swim to Me” was released in 2025.

Jörg Döbereiner is managing editor at D+C.
euz.editor@dandc.eu