Mariana Enriquez is an Argentine journalist, novelist, and short story writer. Mariana Enriquez holds a degree in Journalism and Social Communication from the National University of La Plata. She works as a journalist and is the deputy editor of the arts and culture section of the newspaper Página/12.
Napalm in the Heart (2024) Pol Guasch "Pol Guasch has written a punk novel whose title quotes Iggy Pop's 'heart full of napalm,' but there is no rock here and no animal roaming the streets. We instead find ourselves in a mysterious world of the future, or of the past. It is a world of desire and survival, in the aftermath of an apocalypse marked by different languages, obscure repression, and prose as mysterious as it is beautiful."
Horror Movie (2024) Paul Tremblay "In the hands of Paul Tremblay the story of a lost movie becomes a reflection on fear, the monsters we all are and an investigation on what is a horror novel. It's bold, fearless, a bit sad and very, very scary."
Woodworm (2024) Layla Martínez "A house of women and shadows, built from poetry and revenge. Layla Martinez' tense, chilling novel tells a story of specters, class war, violence and loneliness, as naturally as if the witches had dictated this lucid, terrible nightmare to Martinez themselves."
Thirst (2024) Marina Yuszczuk "It takes courage to write about vampires: they are the greatest of monsters, but also the most trivialized. Marina Yuszczuk manages to bring hers to life in this intimate take on the genre, which also weaves together grief, the history of Buenos Aires, and the voracity of desire."
Vengeance Is Mine (2023) Marie NDiaye "In this disquieting, quietly beautiful novel, Marie NDiaye writes about an unimaginable crime placing around it a world of confusion, trauma, and memories of a past that cannot be trusted. There's more questions than answers in this fiercely intelligent story: everyone is complex and full of shadows, as life is."
The Ghost Theatre (2023) Mat Osman "A story of rebellion and magic, of mysticism and broken love in the streets and theatre and rooftops of Elizabethan London. Beautifully written, delicate, and sad. I'm still haunted by it."
Shy (2023) Max Porter "The troubled boy at the heart of this novel is full of rage and sadness but Max Porter finds tenderness and hope in him. Just beautiful."
Cousins (2023) Aurora Venturini "Cousins is a novel that makes you laugh out loud with its provocations and unexpected choices. Bodies are pushed to the limit in writing that gushes forth like blood. With Cousins Aurora Venturini achieved the acclaim she'd been seeking all her life and enjoyed it in characteristic fashion: baring the scars of the monstrous persona she cultivated with ironic lucidity."
A Different Darkness and Other Abominations (2022) Luigi Musolino "Luigi Musolino enters the territories of superstition and folklore knowing that fairy tales are always terrible and legends hide unspeakable truths. Small towns, supermarkets, apartments, schools or farms: when horror touches reality, it becomes the only thing that exists. These stories have a distinctly European feel: there's a sense of old but not quite forgotten rituals, a touch of Pan and the deities that still linger behind the haunted fields and forests."
HellSans (2022) Ever Dundas "HellSans is speculative fiction at its best: political, fearless, smart, badass. And also with tons of horrific body horror and cruelty from just about everyone. To put it down is unthinkable, you care about everything and everyone all the time?"
The Black Maybe (2022) Attila Veres "[Veres'] world is unique, bleak, terrifying and all his own. Whether it's urban fables of rock music, harvests that claim souls, Aickmanesque situations or an amazing take on cosmic horror, his vision is always stunning. These stories, his debut in English, will blow you away."
The Queens of Sarmiento Park (2022) Camila Sosa Villada "An important book: fun, tragic, political and full of marvel ... It will break your heart and at the same time make you want to laugh and dance."
The Wonders (2022) Elena Medel "Completely unsentimental and with a harshness that hides the most radiant and painful of scars, Elena Medel's The Wonders brings to life several generations of working women: it's a serene and impious novel that puts class, feminism, and the eternal complexity of family ties at the fore."
When I Sing, Mountains Dance (2022) Irene Solà "There's so much beauty in this wonderful polyphonic novel. Each page makes you fall in love again with nature, with imagination, with words, with life. When I Sing, Mountains Dance is timeless and unique."
Paradais (2022) Fernanda Melchor "Fernanda Melchor explores violence and inequity in this brutal novel. She does it with dazzling technical prowess, a perfect pitch for orality, and a neurosurgeon's precision for cruelty. Paradais is a short inexorable descent into Hell."
Jawbone (2022) Mónica Ojeda "Monica Ojeda is fearless in her approach to both themes and style. She deals with horror and desire like few others, with a beauty so extreme that it sometimes leaves you gasping. In Jawbone, an elite Catholic school becomes the stage for nightmares fueled by obsession, creepypastas, and teenagers crazed by hormones and horror movies. But in the end, the novel is about Monica's primary concerns: sexuality, violence, and how a story about the damaged and the lost can be told with such beauty and relentlessness. She scares me, and she amazes me, and I think she is one of the most important writers working in Spanish today."
Eartheater (2020) Dolores Reyes "Dolores Reyes’s writing is visceral and urgent. It’s also connected to a powerful tradition of fantasy and crime, and it reflects on violence against women with enormous lucidity."
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (2020) Laura van den Berg "These are stories about wandering and being invisible, about stepping in a cold shadow. Laura van den Berg puts into words how scary it is when you feel you're disappearing, when a disaster, personal or historical, makes ghosts of us, forever trapped in the trauma. They are also very beautiful, sometimes surreal and even funny stories, about loss and grief and sadness and the lives we try to leave behind. I think this collection will haunt me for a long time."
Fracture (2020) Andrés Neuman "It is impossible to classify Andrés Neuman: each of his books is a new language adventure, guided by the intelligence and the pleasure of words. He never ceases to surprise us and is, doubtlessly, one of the most daring writers in Latin American literature, willing to change, challenge and explore, always with a unique elegance."
