ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sheyla Babic
Author of Mallorca Unplugged: Finding Belonging
Hello, I'm Sheyla.
I've always been interested in people, places, and the small details of everyday life that are easy to miss when they become familiar.
Perhaps that comes from moving so much. Throughout my childhood and young adulthood, I moved many times. I became used to being the new person-arriving, observing, listening, learning the unwritten rules, and slowly finding my place.
Every new home had its own rhythm. Things that seemed completely ordinary to the people living there could feel fascinating, confusing or wonderfully strange to someone seeing them for the first time.
Years later, when I arrived in Mallorca with my family, I recognised that feeling immediately.
Only this time, I started writing things down.
I noticed the conversations, the traditions, the routines, the characters, the church bells, the long coffees, the fiestas, and all those little moments of village life that don't seem particularly important until you stop and really look at them.
And somewhere along the way, Mallorca Unplugged began.
“Perhaps belonging begins when a place stops feeling like somewhere you arrived, and simply becomes where you are.”
How Mallorca Unplugged Began
Perhaps this story began long before Mallorca.
Moving from place to place taught me something about being an outsider: you notice things.
You watch before you understand. You ask questions other people stopped asking years ago. You wonder why things are done a certain way, only to discover that sometimes the answer is simply, because that's how we've always done it.
When I made my home in Búger, a small village in Mallorca, I found myself doing exactly that again.
I watched. I listened. I became curious.
And then I imagined four visitors who were even more unfamiliar with this world than I was.
They arrive intending to observe human life rationally and efficiently. Instead, they encounter neighbours, traditions, sheep, long conversations, unnecessary celebrations, affection, arguments, coffee - and an entire village that refuses to behave as efficiently as expected.
Through them, I could look at ordinary life as though I were seeing it for the first time.
And somewhere between observing my new home and writing about four outsiders trying to understand it, the story became about something that had followed me through many places and many beginnings:
What does it mean to arrive somewhere - and when does that place finally become home?
Mallorca Unplugged: Finding Belonging is my debut novel.
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