El Buen Mal / Good and Evil and Other Stories [Spanish]

Samanta Schweblin, la mestra del cuento contempor neo latinoamericano, regresa con un libro destinado a convertirse en un cl sico global.

Magn ticos e irresistibles. En cada uno de los cuentos de El buen mal, Samanta Schweblin nos abduce a otra dimensi n donde quedamos en contacto ntimo con sus personajes. Encandilados por el fulgor de la inminente tragedia, vulnerables y profundamente humanos, advierten cu nto podr a transformarlos la irrupci n de lo inesperado. A algunos los dejar de pie frente al dolor, a otros dialogando con la culpa y a todos atravesados por la incertidumbre. Importa saber qu es verdad? Se trata, de principio a fin, de ser part cipes de un fenomenal artificio literario. Con in dita perspicacia, Schweblin intuye el punto de quiebre de una voluntad, la intensidad premonitoria de un temblor y la lejan a que impone la ternura. Conoce la mejor de las infinitas posibilidades de una historia y el modo de encajar las piezas de una trama para dar con un gran relato que se hunda y proyecte, oscurezca e ilumine el d a a d a de la poca y el alma de quienes la habitan. En su literatura, premiada internacionalmente, los filos entre realidad y ensue o deslumbran como los de un cuchillo.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

A haunting, unforgettable collection of tales from the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature winner and three-time Booker finalist, Samanta Schweblin.

Once a decade a story collection rips a hole in the sky and we remember how it feels to have a spell cast upon us. From Jamaica Kincaid's At the Bottom of the River to Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son to the earthquake stories of Haruki Murakami, these books are often short, but unforgettable. Samanta Schweblin's Good and Evil is such a book. Sculpted and lucid, strange and uncanny, here is a masterpiece of suggestiveness. Step by step these six stories lure us into the shadows to confront the monsters of everyday life--ourselves.

In one tale, a mother surfaces from the depths of the lake behind her house, where she saw something awful yet alluring, to go home to her family, only to wish she could go back. In another, a sorrowful father finds himself unable to communicate with his son after a life-changing misfortune occurs under his supervision. In yet another, a dying woman calls a friend she hasn't spoken to in thirty years--not since an accident which forever changed them both.

Guilt, grief, and relationships severed permeate this collection--but so do unspeakable bonds of family, love, and longing, each sinister and beautiful. When something seismic happens in our lives, the waves keep coming for years after, with warning or without. Sometimes, all we can do is wait around the corner, ear pressed to the phone receiver, for them to arrive.

Fantastical and subtly terrifying, these stories draw on magical realism, psychological fiction, and the dark side of fairy tales inherited from literary predecessors like the Brothers Grimm and Jorge Luis Borges. Yet, far from antiquated or closed off, Schweblin's worlds invite us in, like quicksand or a strong river's current. These stories will insinuate themselves into your heart, and your bloodstream.