Mariana Enriquez

A diabolical collection of stories featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, goblins, and the macabre by “one of Latin America’s most exciting authors” (Silvia Moreno-Garcia)

“Horror has found its master.”—Joy Williams

“A collection of brilliant nightmares.”—Paul Tremblay

“First-rate literary horror.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed—all those birds were once women.

Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the watertank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women—these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists. Lyrical and hypnotic, heart-stopping and deeply moving, Enriquez’s stories never fail to enthrall, entertain, and leave us shaken. Translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, Enriquez’s latest collection showcases her unique blend of the literary and the horrific, and show why Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls her, “the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”