Samanta Schweblin is one of a generation of South American female writers whose willingness to experiment with language, content and form has made them some of the most interesting and necessarily provocative voices in literature today (other names include Fernanda Melchor, Maria Gainza, Ariana Harwicz and Pola Oloixarac). While their predominantly male forebears staked out the territory of magic realism, these newer writers have arguably shown themselves to be even more innovative, utilising elements of autofiction, reportage and literary postmodernism in their quest to create a literature that offers a uniquely critical perspective on our times.
With her predilection for the dark and discomfiting, Schweblin sits closest to fellow Argentinian Mariana Enríquez, whose stories also occupy a queasy interstitial realm in which reality and nightmare can be difficult to distinguish. Schweblin’s first work to be translated into English was the 2014 novella Fever Dream, which made the shortlist for the 2017 Booker International. Fever Dream uses the tools of psychological horror to tell a story about the destructive power of agricultural chemical companies, and the economic and political vested interests that afford them protection. She followed this with the 2018 science fiction novel Little Eyes, which employed a fractured narrative technique to create a highly engaging and thought-provoking commentary on the surveillance state and our willing participation in our own subjugation. In this new collection, winner in the US of a National book award, Schweblin steps back out on the shifting sands of literary horror that characterised Fever Dream, with seven stories of domestic suspense and psychological imbalance.
