Han cantado bingo is the narrative debut of poet and illustrator Lana Corujo, a novel that combines imagination, memory, and a unique atmosphere to explore childhood, family bonds, and the weight of shared secrets.
It all begins with a game. Some nights, in the ten suspended minutes before grandmother returns from bingo, two sisters sneak out the back door and run to El Ahorcado, a volcano round like an upside-down belly. They count to three and return without looking back. But one night something changes. When crossing the territory of a childhood marked by violence, the view of the world is never the same again.
The novel is structured around a bingo card with fifteen numbers, corresponding to the protagonist’s ages throughout the story. Each number introduces a chapter and marks the passage of time, while those ten minutes of a game become a space where everything seems possible. Through this symbolic structure, the author portrays a family shaped by a gift that is both inherited and endured.
With poetic, playful, and at the same time unsettling language, Corujo delves into family silences, guilt, popular fairs, and the wounds that cross childhood. The volcanic landscape of Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands (Spain), rough like the rofe that covers the island, becomes a symbolic setting where memory, fear, and affection coexist in constant tension.
Celebrated by critics for its emotional intensity and visual imagery, Han cantado bingo builds a unique narrative about the end of childhood and the complicity that can arise between two sisters who share a secret.
