Good And Evil And Other Stories (from The International Booker Shortlisted Author Of Fever Dream)

By (author) Schweblin, Samanta; Translated by McDowell, Megan
Short description/annotation:
The strange and uncanny new collection from International Booker shortlisted author of Fever Dream.
Description:

''No one writes like Samanta Schweblin'' - Lorrie Moore

The strange and explosive new collection from the incomparable imagination of Samanta Schweblin, a master of the short story.

A gripping blend of the raw, the astonishing and the tragic, every story is as perfectly unexpected as a snare: tightly, exquisitely wound, ready to snap at a touch.

Here, a young father is haunted by the consequences of a moment of distraction; tragedy is complicated by the inexplicable appearance of an injured horse; an attempted poisoning leads two writers to startling conclusions; and, a lonely woman’s charity is rewarded with home-invasion. And in the shocking opening story, a mother surfaces from the depths of the lake behind her house, where she saw something awful yet alluring.

Guilt, grief, and relationships severed permeate this mesmerising collection – but so do unspeakable bonds of family, love, and longing, each sinister and beautiful. Step by step these unnerving stories lure us into the shadows to confront the monsters of everyday life – ourselves.

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Remarkably taut, clear, precise, and yet capable of capturing the extent of our human messiness, these stories are perfect for the times we dwell inside
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No one writes like Samanta Schweblin. Her narratives are sui generis - wonderfully unpredictable and invitingly strange
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Samanta Schweblin combines the urgent propulsion that characterizes all great storytelling with precise, if uncanny, descriptions of human feelings that often go unnamed, those ambiguous zones of human reality where awe, dread, and desire mingle
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''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''
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''The book I wish I had written''
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''Read this in a single sitting and by the end I could hardly breathe. It''s a total mind-wrecker. Amazing. Thrilling''
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''The Grimm brothers and Franz Kafka pay a visit to Argentina in Samanta Schweblin''s darkly humorous tales of people who have slipped through cracks or fallen down holes into alternate realities''
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''Schweblin has a true talent for getting to the centre of our fears and drawing them out''
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''Schweblin''s particular genius lies in the fact that there’s something inherently savage and ungovernable about her work''
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''Schweblin''s imagination seemingly knows no bounds’
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‘A master of elegant and uncanny fiction . . . she can evoke more feelings in one sentence than many writers can in a whole story . . . a writer whose potential is beginning to seem limitless’
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‘Strange and beautiful''
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''Genius''
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''Sickeningly good''
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''Schweblin delivers a skin-prickling masterclass in dread and suspense''
Biographical note:
Samanta Schweblin won the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature for her story collection, Seven Empty Houses. Her debut novel, Fever Dream, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and her novel Little Eyes and story collection Mouthful of Birds have been longlisted for the same prize. Her books have been translat