Killing the Nerve traces Anna Pazos’s restless journey from her native Barcelona across continents, blending memoir, reportage, and cultural commentary. Beginning with her departure from what she calls the “Mediterranean mediocrity” of her hometown, Pazos recounts formative experiences studying in Thessaloniki, reporting from Jerusalem, crossing the Atlantic with a flawed partner, and living in New York in the wake of #MeToo and on the cusp of the pandemic. Her return to Catalonia prompts a reckoning with personal identity, place, and belonging.

Written first in Catalan as Matar el nervi and now available in English from Foundry Editions, Pazos’s prose is precise, unsentimental, and sharply observant. She examines youth, ambition, and dislocation with the cool detachment of a reporter and the intimacy of a memoirist. The result is a clear-eyed, engaging account of a generation navigating freedom, uncertainty, and the search for meaning across shifting cultural and geographic landscapes.

Anna Pazos has immense life experience and Killing the Nerve is a curious exploration of her journeys - literal and metaphorical, personal and professional.
The writing is plain and objective, like a documentarist's.
I enjoyed Pazos' independence, observations and all of the beautiful places that serve as characters. Very close to my heart.

This is an exploration of Anna’s twenties, beginning with her Erasmus student days in Thessaloniki, continuing with her early working life in cities like Jerusalem and New York and ending on a brief meditation as to her Catalan family history.

The tone of this book is incredibly conversational and readable. I loved that Anna captures the atmosphere of each city and its people, religions, politics and daily life in a way that feels alive. There’s such a spirit of adventure that makes this book brim with life and honesty as it conveys the experience of an adrenaline filled life. Anna also doesn’t shy away from sharing her dating life with all its chaos and unpredictability, which initially caught me by surprise a little but particularly the descriptions of modern day dating in big cities are bound to feel relatable to many readers.

I recommend this book if you enjoy travel literature, easy going memoirs and more conversational books which also describe modern day relationships in their messiness and beauty. This is a memoir that doesn’t take itself too seriously!