Bookshops across Catalonia now have Veintisiete noches (Twenty-Seven Nights) by Natalia Zito, published by Alrevés Editorial. The novel, inspired by the real-life case of Natalia Kohen, looks at power, love and individual freedom, with a focus on autonomy in old age.
Natalia Kohen, fictionalised as Sarah Katz in the novel, was born in Mendoza, Argentina, on 7 January 1918. She became a patron of the arts, a visual artist and a writer. Married to Mauricio Kohen, a powerful industrialist and owner of the pharmaceutical company Argentia, she played a central role in the family business for decades.
In 2005, when she was 88, Kohen was a wealthy widow leading an active life. She gave away valuable artworks, and rumours suggested a possible marriage to a much younger partner. Her daughters, concerned by these decisions, believed they were inappropriate for a woman of her age. After consulting several specialists, they secured a medical diagnosis that led to her involuntary commitment to a psychiatric clinic. She was declared legally incapacitated that same year and held against her will for twenty-seven nights.
The story did not end with her release. A later legal process concluded that Kohen retained her mental faculties and ordered the return of her assets. By then, the case had made headlines and prompted public debate about the limits of autonomy in old age and the right to make personal life decisions.
Writer and psychoanalyst Natalia Zito, born in Buenos Aires in 1977, met Natalia Kohen in August 2017 when Kohen was 99. Zito had been working on a fictional piece inspired by the case for some time, and the meeting helped her find the final tone and form for the novel. The book takes its title from the time Kohen spent confined in the psychiatric facility.
The novel has been a publishing success, and its film adaptation is available on Netflix. For readers in Catalonia, it adds a direct question: at what point do we stop owning our own lives? For more local book coverage, see our news page.
Zito has said the case was difficult to tell, but that was part of its appeal. She also said the story brought together her work as a psychoanalyst and as a writer, and that the book is uncomfortable, which interests her. The novel also raises wider questions about desire in later life, and about who decides whether sexuality has an expiry date.