Mariana Enríquez and Megan McDowell on The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
Author Mariana Enríquez and translator Megan McDowell speak about the International Booker Prize-longlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.
Megan McDowell
Megan McDowell has translated books by many contemporary South American and Spanish authors, including Samanta Schweblin, Alejandro Zambra and Mariana Enriquez
Her translations have won the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the English PEN award and the Premio Valle-Inclán, and she has been nominated four times for the International Booker Prize. Her short-story translations have been published in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the New York Times Magazine, Tin House, McSweeney’s and Granta, among others. In 2020 she won an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Originally from Richmond, Kentucky, she lives in Santiago, Chile.
All nominated books
Mariana Enríquez populates contemporary urban Argentina with a macabre cast of crooked witches, unruly teenagers, homeless ghosts and hungry women
Translated by Megan McDowell
Spine-tingling and strange, Samanta Schweblin's writing expertly blurs the line between the surreal and the everyday
Translated by Megan McDowell
Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this taut, unsettling ghost story for the real world
Translated by Megan McDowell
Samanta Schweblin creates a dark and complex world that is both familiar and unsettling – largely because we recognise it as the one we live in
Translated by Megan McDowell
