Things We Lost in the Fire

(Paperback)

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Description

Thrilling and terrifying, Things We Lost in the Fire takes the reader into a world of Argentine Gothic. A world of sharp-toothed children and young girls racked by desire, where demons lurk beneath the river and stolen skulls litter the pavements. A world where the secrets half-buried under Argentina's terrible dictatorship rise up to haunt the present day, and where women, exhausted by a plague of violence, find that their only path out lies in the flames...

Reviews

Bright with brilliance... The stories [create] a sensibility as distinctive as that found in Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son. They are a portrait of a world in fragments, a mirrorball made of razor blades -- John Self * Guardian *
An utterly brilliant measure of deep existential terror ... you [will] return home looking pale and haunted -- Best Summer Books selected by Mark OConnell * Observer *
Slim but phenomenal... The spookiness of these 12 stories sets into the reader's mind like a jet stone, sparkling through all that darkness * Vanity Fair *
The only book that's ever left me afraid to turn out the lights... mercilessly incisive and deeply creepy -- Books of the Year selected by Lisa McInerney * Irish Times *
Fiction doesn't get much better than this -- John Ajvide Lindqvist, author * Let the Right One In *
Teeming with death, sex and the macabre, this short-story collection by one of Argentina's rising literary talents might best be described as Buenos Aires gothic -- Best Summer Books * Financial Times *
[Full of] claustrophobic terror... stylish and compelling -- Luke Brown * Financial Times *
Propulsive and mesmerising... I will be haunted for some time by this book * New York Times Book Review *
Enrquez is a mesmerizing writer who demands to be read... her fiction hits with the force of a freight train -- Dave Eggers, author * The Circle *
Beautiful but savage... [Enriquez] gives the best horror stories a run for their money... This is the best short story collection I have read this year -- Lucy Scholes * National *
An utterly brilliant measure of deep existential terror ... you [will] return home looking pale and haunted -- Best Summer Reads * Guardian *
Exquisite... unsettling and haunting... engaging and compelling * New Internationalist *
These spookily clear-eyed, elementally intense stories are the business. I find myself no more able to defend myself from their advances than Enrquez's funny, brutal, bruised characters are able to defend themselves from life as it's lived -- Helen Oyeyemi, author * Boy, Snow, Bird *
It seems wrong, somehow to call this grouping of Mariana Enrquez's stories a collection. There is nothing collected about these stories. These stories unsettle; they disturb; they disquiet. Read them! -- Kelly Link, author * Get in Trouble *
Many of us have long looked up to Mariana Enrquez, one of the great talents of the new literature from Argentina. Possibly the most intimate one. Her writing is a prodigious blend which reimagines certain traditions under that dreadful clarity we identify as an author's voice. Sharp and intricate, her genre awareness is deserving of nothing but my admiration. Sharing her work is great cause for celebration -- Andrs Neuman
When I read Mariana Enrquez's stories, I forget where I am. I miss my subway stop. I hold my breath. Her fiction is that pulse-racingly superb, that electric and original. Mariana Enrquez is an essential voice in contemporary fiction, and The Things We Lost in the Fire will be a sensation -- Laura van den Berg, author * Find Me *
Enriquez's stories are not only supremely important, but addictive and joyfully grotesque... Born from the scars of a nation, they will leave a lasting mark on you -- Alan Bett * Skinny *
Gripping * Monocle *
Enriquez scratches satisfyingly at Argentina's underbelly * Newsweek *
A detailed cultural portrait and a blend of realistic fiction and fantasy, the stories feature spirits and murders, marriages happy and sad, friendships and heartaches, all against the backdrop of past and present Argentina... The author picks apart the intricacies of human relationships and lays them out on the page in a manner that is simple, but delicate...A thorough exploration of the human condition, -- Alice Kouzmenko * Storgy Online *

Author Bio

Mariana Enriquez is a novelist, journalist and short story writer from Argentina. She has published two novels, a collection of short stories as well as a collection of travel writings, Chicos que vuelven, and a novella. She is an editor at Pagina/12, a newspaper based in Buenos Aires.

Megan McDowell is a Spanish language translator. She has translated books by Alejandro Zambra, Samanta Schweblin, Gonzalo Torne, Lina Meruane, Carlos Busqued, and Mariana Enriquez. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Harper's, TinHouse, and McSweeney's. She lives in Chile.