Mariana Enríquez - Ágyban dohányozni veszélyes

While Gabriel García Márquez's Macondo was haunted by the capricious phantoms of tyranny, Mariana Enríquez's Buenos Aires is imbued with relentless pain and injustice instead of wonder. Enríquez brilliantly filters the slow violence of Argentine history and the present through the traditions of classic Anglo-Saxon horror. The starkly real, feminist horror of her short stories incorporates such themes as the objectification of the female body, radical social inequalities, the ubiquitous toxic patriarchy and oppression, genocide, migration or the exploitation of the environment. The unspoken meanness shines in the darkness of the stories.
Thanks to the vividness of the lost and outcast characters and the aura of the plot, the texts go far beyond politics and the horror genre. Enríquez's strong female characters are pervaded by melancholy, they do not realize what is crushing them in the cycle of their own torment, they stand paralyzed and left to themselves in front of what is happening. Solace can only be found in bizarre fetishes, the investigation of missing children, the flesh of a dead pop star, the occult and pyromania.
It is dangerous to smoke in bed paints the deep darkness of evil, but the light that gives hope sometimes forces the reader to squint. Mariana Enríquez's art is subtly suggestive, forming an ideal literary fabric from poetic flashes and the rawness of spoken language.

Mariana Enríquez (1973) is an Argentinian writer. In 2019, his work was recognized with the prestigious Herralde Prize for Spanish-language literature. He was also a finalist for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the Kirkus Prize. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages. His novel Nuestra parte de noche (Our night) and his book of short stories Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego (Taken away by the fire) will soon be published by Open Books.