DESCRIPTION

A blazing new story collection that will make you feel like the house is collapsing in on you, from the 3 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 empty. Some are devoid of love or life or furniture, of people or the truth or of memories. But in Samanta Schweblin's tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back in: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child's first encounter with a dark choice or the fallibility of parents.

This was the collection that established Samanta Schweblin at the forefront of a new generation of Latin American writers. And now in English it will push her cult status to new heights. Seven Empty Houses is an entrypoint into a fiercely original mind, and a slingshot into Schweblin's destablizing, 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 writers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Samanta Schweblin is the author of the novel Fever Dream, a finalist for the International Booker Prize, and the novel Little Eyes and story collection A Mouthful of Birds, longlisted for the same prize. Chosen by Granta as one of the twenty-two best writers in Spanish under the age of thirty-five, she has won numerous prestigious awards around the world. Her books have been translated into thirty-five languages, and her work has appeared in English in The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. Originally from Buenos Aires, Schweblin lives in Berlin. Megan McDowell is the recipient of a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been short- or longlisted four times for the International Booker Prize. She lives in Santiago, Chile.

REVIEWS

“Takes aim at the place we feel safest: home. Darker and more tinged with terror than her breakthrough novel, Fever Dream, this is Schweblin at her sharpest and most ferocious ... Arranged as peepholes into the private lives of others, each of these seven stories centers on a domestic dwelling, exploring how the things that constitute our most intimate spaces are relational and interconnected, and therefore in many ways the most unstable. There are absences on many levels ... Schweblin is never explicit. Any implied creepiness is a product of the reader’s own imagination ... Scarier than any fall horror movie...is the knowledge that the various assemblages of our lives are merely delicate scaffolding, liable to come crashing down at any moment.” —Liska Jacobs, New York Times Book Review