An arresting work of magic realism, Enriquez’s jet-black stories of witchcraft, obsession and madness in Buenos Aires combine to form a fever dream where women and girls constitute an unpredictable force of nature.
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021
Welcome to Buenos Aires, a city thrumming with murderous intentions and morbid desires, where missing children come back from the dead and unearthed bones carry terrible curses.
These brilliant, unsettling tales of revenge, witchcraft, fetishes, disappearances and urban madness spill over with women and girls whose dark inclinations will lead them over the edge.
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 9781783788217
Number of pages: 208
Weight: 151 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 12 mm
After you've lived in Enriquez's marvellous brain for the time it takes to read The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, the known world feels ratcheted a few degrees off centre. Smoky, carnal and dazzling - Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
I loved these twisted, lustful whispers in the dark. There is serious power in this writing - Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters
A weird and wonderful exploration of contemporary horror - cities falling apart, society turning on itself, the loneliness of the internet age. But more than that: these stories are fun. Wild, triggering, sinister, button-pushing fun - Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies
Rotting little ghosts, heartbeat fetishes, curses and witches and meat: each of these stories is a luscious, bewitching nightmare. I adore this book - Kirsty Logan, author of The Gracekeepers
Enriquez's work: tainted rivers, corrupted streets, spoiled meat, slain children, deeply registers the horror of known commonplace. She writes her stories, based in the atmosphere of truth, with a darkly descriptive poetic turn - Patti Smith
Enriquez is a mesmerizing writer who demands to be read. Like Bolaño, she is interested in matters of life and death, and her fiction hits with the full force of a train - Dave Eggers, author of The Circle
Spine-tingling but stunning... these glittering, gothic stories are a force to be reckoned with, and Enriquez's talent and fearlessness is something to behold - Financial Times
Brilliantly unsettling... Tricking us into waiting for a ghost to "put out its head", Enriquez surprises us with real horror - Chris Power, Guardian
Reminds us what a remarkable and twisted instrument [Enriquez's] imagination is... A heady brew - Jane Graham, Big Issue
When it comes to book reviewing clichés, the word "haunting" is surely one of the tattiest, yet Mariana Enriquez's newly translated short story collection restores to that tired adjective all its most mysterious, fearful strangeness... an arrestingly original talent - Hephzibah Anderson, Observer
A twisted mix of nightmarish desires and ink-black gothic... that will leave you shaken but secretly rather thrilled. Everything about these tales feels shockingly alive... Darkly comic - The Times
[Mariana Enriquez] reaffirms her claim to the title of queen of Latin American gothic - Financial Times
[A] spine-tingling, luminous collection whose enthralling characters all dance across the spectral line between our world and the beyond - Best books of 2021, Oprah Daily
Argentinian writer Mariana Enriquez is a highly persuasive cinematic and visceral spell-caster with an apparent desire to plant immovable nightmarish seeds in the brains of her readers... The Dangers of Smoking in Bed showcase[s] her extraordinary imagination - Big Issue
INTERNATIONAL MAN BOOKER SHORT LIST 2021.
Book of intense short stories,all have eerie happenings running through them together with sex in some of the stories.Translated from Spanish,the writer is Argentinian and the...
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People eat people, they cut open chests and seek hearts, they are haunted by ghosts, some are kidnapped and return, other summon dogs to devour those they dislike, arms are sliced open, wrists cut, perverse desires... More
‘’Or she’d hear a rooster crow in the middle of the night and remember - but who had told her? that at that hour of the night a rooster’s crow was a sign that someone was going to die.’’
Mariana Enriquez’s stories...
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