Seven Empty Houses: Winner of the National Book Award for Translated Literature, 2022

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A blazing new story collection that will make you feel like the house is collapsing in on you, from the three-time International Booker Prize finalist, 'lead[ing] a vanguard of Latin American writers forging their own 21st-century canon.' O, the Oprah magazine The seven houses in these seven stories are strange. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. But in Samanta Schweblins tense, visionary tales,something always creeps back in: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, or the fallibility of parents. Seven Empty Housesoffers an entry point into a fiercely original mind, and a slingshot into Schweblins destabilizing, exhilarating literary world.In each story, the twists and turns will unnerve and surprise: Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin and reveals uncomfortable truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others.This is a masterwork from one of our most brilliant modern writers.

Reviews

'Both noirish and sinister, with violence broiling beneath the calm... Schweblin, at her best, has a knack for eeriness.'

-- Sunday Telegraph

'[Schweblin's] particular genius lies in thefact that theres something inherently savage and ungovernable about her work.'

-- Financial Times

'The Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin loves Franz Kafka and Elizabeth Strout. Its hard to conceive of two more different writers. But imagine a fusion between their styles dreamlike surrealism and taut domestic drama and youll have some idea of Schweblins uniquely weird storyscapes...What does it mean to inhabit a house, or a body, and what do those spaces become when were no longer fully there Haunting, elemental questions that run right through this bold writers eerie, mysterious oeuvre.'

-- The Sunday Times
'A quiet, off-centre gem. The houses in question all naturally serve as foils for the delicate psychology of those who live in or pass through them, the objects inside them equally freighted with emotion. Disquieting and dark it may be, but it is lifted with sly humour and sharp observation, related in clear, plain-speaking prose that leaves lots for the reader to fill between the lines.' -- Marie Claire

'Schweblin seems capable above all else of helping us reconsider what stories can be while always making them feel tense, uncomfortable, exhilarating.'

-- Los Angeles Times

Haunted houses are a well-worn trope but this new collection of short stories by Samanta Schweblintakes the idea in surprising new directions Schweblins characters lose themselves in webs of greed, loss and violence, and theirunsettling tales remind us that we are all shaped by the physical spaces that we inhabit and come from.

-- Monocle

'Rejoice! Just when were settling into fall, all cozy on the couch with a Netflix show queued up, a new short story collection fromSamanta Schweblinis here to spit in your pumpkin spiced latte and drag its nails down the wall.Seven Empty Houses... takes aim at the place we feel safest: home.Darker and more tinged with terrorthan her breakthrough novel,Fever Dream, this is Schweblin at her sharpest and most ferocious.'

-- New York Times Book Review

'Samanta Schweblin writes at the very end of the possible. Her stories are mesmerising, exquisitely crafted and deeply unsettling. Each sentence is as precise and invasive as an expertly wielded scalpel.'

-- Jan Carson, author of The Raptures

'Starting a story by the Argentinian Samanta Schweblin is like tumbling into a dark hole with no idea where you'll end up.'

-- Chris Power, The Sunday Times

These seven eerie, uneasy stories seem peculiarly pertinentto the present post-pandemic financial crisis mood of uncertainty the stories may be spare and pared back, but their cumulative effect is a heightened sense of fear and a disrupted sense of safety.

-- Daily Mail

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 todayConveyed to English-language readers in the seamlessly poetical renditions of the authors regular translator Megan McDowell, thesecuriously addictive, tightly wound stories are as compelling as they are alienating. Schweblins tendency to understatement, forever flirting with entropic decline yet never entirely capitulating to it, makes her latest workan original and provoking contribution to the literature of unease.

-- Guardian

'Seven Empty Housessneaks dread like a cursed gift through its pages. In Megan McDowell's translation from the original Spanish, Schweblin's prose is pared to a fine edgeThe collection's power is in its capacity to speak to the danger that is waiting, if you would only peer in through the keyhole.'

-- Big Issue

'The proximity to Halloween is appropriate, given Schweblins idiosyncratic mode of tense and unsettling literary horror.As inFever DreamandLittle Eyessomething is always creeping around these empty houses.'

-- The Millions

'Schweblin's newest collection may be her most unsettling... Spectacular and strange...The most disquieting realization of all is perhaps the fact that any of these scenarios could arrive at any moment.'

-- Washington Post

I find Samantas writing to be simply superb. She keeps you gripped to her writing and turning the pages long after you should have returned to other tasks This is an excellent collection of short stories looking at our ordinary domestic lives, and I will certainly be recommending this book to all who will listen.

* Independent Book Reviews *

'Ethereal Seven compelling explorations of vacancy in another perfectly spare and atmospheric translation.'

-- Kirkus

'Evocative.'

-- Publishers Weekly

'Excellent.'

-- Bookriot

'Uniquely satisfying.'

-- LitHub

'Perfect reading for the month of the dead.'

-- The Gloss

'WhileSeven Empty Housesis less fantastical than Schweblins previous collection,Mouthful of Birds, the unease of the uncanny persists.'

-- The Spectator

'The Argentinian author of Fever Dream deftly manipulates expectations in stories of secrets and buried resentments...Part of the pleasure of Schweblin's fictions is how she subverts expectations... Her fractured worlds make compelling reading.'

-- Observer

'There are seven strange tales here with vivid characters and writing as smooth as butter... An original and unique collection.'

-- Breakingnews.ie

'Unsettling and disturbing.'

-- Bookmunch

'Ominous and exhilarating.'

-- Jewish News

'Savage and surreal, the inhabitants of these fictions are on a journey deep into the self but what they discover is not what they, or the reader might expect...Schweblins narrators are gloriously unreliable; her stories have the scope of cinema.'

-- The Irish Times

'The sinuous, sinister tales that make upSeven Empty Housesare set in the intimate sphere, precisely where we might expect to feel most protected. But the houses of the title are not homes, and some of them do not even belong to their occupants... Marvellously apprehensive.'

-- TLS

'Seven Empty Housesreaches into the domestic with ease and pulls out the opposite: stories poised to unnerve and unsettle the reader and shock them out of the familiar... Subtle, effortlessly constructed tales of dislocation, intrusion, and crisis. They feature exquisitely crafted sentences but also plots perfected to catch the reader unawares.'

-- Sydney Morning Herald

Author Bio

Samanta Schweblinis the author of the novelFever Dream, a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, as well as the novelLittle Eyesand story collectionMouthful of Birds, both longlisted for the same prize. Her work has won numerous other prestigious awards including the Jos Donoso Ibero-American Prize for Letters, 2022, and has been translated into thirty-five languages. Her writing has appeared in English inThe New YorkerandHarpers Magazine.Originally from Buenos Aires, Schweblin now lives in Berlin. Megan McDowellhas translated books by many contemporary South American and Spanish authors, and her translations have been published inThe New Yorker, Harper'sandThe Paris Review. She lives in Chile.