The Dangers of Smoking in Bed - Reading Guide
Explore the ‘magical realism 2.0’ of Mariana Enríquez, and her extraordinary combination of ‘horror story, ghost story and pulp fiction’
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021. Mariana Enríquez populates contemporary urban Argentina with a macabre cast of crooked witches, unruly teenagers, homeless ghosts and hungry women. Translated by Megan McDowell.
As terrifying as they are socially conscious, the stories press into the unspoken - fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history - with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighbourhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.
Mariana Enríquez
About the Author
Mariana Enríquez was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. She is a novelist, journalist and short story writer from Argentina.
Megan McDowell
About the Translator
Megan McDowell has translated books by many contemporary South American and Spanish authors, including Samanta Schweblin, Alejandro Zambra and Mariana Enriquez.Lucy Phelps reads from The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
Lucy Phelps reads from The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, written by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell and shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.
This video was created for Edinburgh International Book Festival in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and directed by Blanche McIntyre.
It’s like news from a different world
Other nominated books 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.
Spine-tingling and strange, Samanta Schweblin's writing expertly blurs the line between the surreal and the everyday.
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.
