writing – nature – supernature
by Samanta Schweblin (trans. Megan McDowell) Feverish, Argentinian horror. Lying in a hospital bed in rural Argentina, Amanda is visited by eight-year-old stranger, David. A traumatic and terrifying event has brought her to this point and the precocious David cajoles her into confronting the memory. Amanda is immobile and David explains ‘It’s the worms. You […]
Continue Reading
by José Eduardo Agualusa, Daniel Hahn (Translator) Surreal political fable. Angolan journalist, Daniel Benchimol, comes across a mango-yellow camera floating in the sea. The camera belongs to Moira, the Cotton-Candy-Hair-Woman. Daniel hasn’t met Moira yet, but he has been dreaming about her. They meet and become involved with a Brazilian neuroscientist creating a machine to […]
Continue Reading
by Jenny Hval, Marjam Idriss (Translator) Hyper-sensual, surreal and as intense as bletted fruit. Norwegian student, Jo, arrives in a new country to study biology. The strangeness of her new life becomes stranger still when she finds accommodation in a former brewery. The building is rotten to the core. Through its paper-thin, partial partitions, Jo […]
Continue Reading
Keith Ridgway Hallucinogenic noir. Sharply-dressed detectives, Hawthorn and Child, investigate a drive-by shooting on London’s mean streets. Further bizarre and grisly events unfurl. As the dapper duo turn their attention to each new crime, earlier incidents peel away discarded. Marketed as a novel, Hawthorn and Child more closely resembles a series of interconnected, unresolved short […]
Continue Reading
Silvina Ocampo Weird, surreal, shot through with the blackest humour, and quite breathtaking. A retrospective of the short stories of Silvina Ocampo, spanning almost fifty years of her prolific writing career. Ocampo was denied Argentina’s National Prize for Literature for the reason that her writing was ‘desmasiado crueles’. This collection represents those stories deemed ‘too […]
Continue Reading
