Las enfermedades de mujeres en el capitalismo tardío

This article focuses on the illnesses of middle-aged women in late capitalism that are enhanced by – to use the extended metaphor – the illness of the economic system itself. To this end, it analyzes two contemporary novels that autofictionalize the experience of pain that lacks a clear etiology, but at the same time extend it to the social fabric. These two political novels written from a feminist perspective denounce the illness of the socio- economic system that erases, silences and discredits the middle-aged female body. Both books thematize subalternity and dependency and thus bring women out of silence and invisibility. Moreover, interestingly, both metaphorize the system in the figure of the tick. These are two novels written on opposite sides of Europe: the book <italic>Clavícula</italic> (2017) by the well-known Spanish author Marta Sanz and <italic>Znikanie</italic> (2019) by the Polish Izabela Morska.