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
- Shortlisted
- The Man Booker International Prize 2017
- Published by Oneworld
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Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this taut, unsettling ghost story for the real world
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. The two seem anxious as, at David’s ever more insistent prompting, Amanda recounts a series of events from the apparently recent past. As David pushes her to recall whatever trauma has landed her in her terminal state, he unwittingly opens a chest of horrors - and the terrifying nature of their reality is brought into shocking focus.
Samanta Schweblin
Samanta Schweblin is the author of three story collections that have won numerous awards, and she has been nominated for the International Booker Prize three times
More about Samanta Schweblin 
Megan McDowell
Megan McDowell has translated books by many contemporary South American and Spanish authors, including Samanta Schweblin, Alejandro Zambra and Mariana Enriquez
More about Megan McDowell Other nominated books by Samanta Schweblin
Spine-tingling and strange, Samanta Schweblin's writing expertly blurs the line between the surreal and the everyday
Other nominated books by Megan McDowell
Mariana Enríquez populates contemporary urban Argentina with a macabre cast of crooked witches, unruly teenagers, homeless ghosts and hungry women
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
Spine-tingling and strange, Samanta Schweblin's writing expertly blurs the line between the surreal and the everyday
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