You are here

Back to top

Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories (Hardcover)

Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories Cover Image
By Mariana Enriquez, Megan McDowell (Translated by)
$24.00
This book is out of print or backordered and cannot be ordered right now.

Description


The “propulsive and mesmerizing” (The New York Times Book Review) story collection by the International Booker-shortlisted author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
 
The short stories of Mariana Enriquez are:
“The most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”—Kazuo Ishiguro
“Phenomenal.”Vanity Fair
“Violent and cool, told in voices so lucid they feel spoken.”The Boston Globe
 
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Boston Globe, Paste, Words Without Borders, Grub Street, Remezcla, Entropy

Electric, disturbing, and exhilarating, the stories of Things We Lost in the Fire explore multiple dimensions of life and death in contemporary Argentina. Each haunting tale simmers with the nation's troubled history, but among the abandoned houses, black magic, superstitions, lost loves, and regrets, there is also friendship, compassion, and humor. 
 
In these stories, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson and Julio Cortázar, three young friends distract themselves with drugs and pain in the midst a government-enforced blackout; a girl with nothing to lose steps into an abandoned house and never comes back out; to protest a viral form of domestic violence, a group of women set themselves on fire.
 
Translated by the National Book Award-winning Megan McDowell, these “slim but phenomenal” (Vanity Fair) stories explore what happens when our darkest desires are left to roam unchecked and show why Mariana Enriquez has become one of the most celebrated new voices in global literature.

About the Author


Mariana Enriquez is a writer and journalist based in Buenos Aires. She is the author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which was a finalist for the International Booker Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Speculative Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction, and the novel Our Share of Night.

Megan McDowell has translated many of the most important Latin American writers working today. Her translations have won the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the English PEN award, the Premio Valle-Inclán, and two O. Henry Prizes, and have been nominated for the International Booker Prize (four times) and the Kirkus Prize. Her short story translations have been featured 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. She is from Richmond, Kentucky, and lives in Santiago, Chile.

Praise For…


Named a Best Book of the Year by: Boston Globe, PASTE Magazine, Words Without Borders, Grub Street, Remezccla, and Entropy Magazine

Praise for THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE: 

“Enriquez’s stories are historically aware and class-conscious, but her characters never avail themselves of sentimentalism or comfort. She’s after a truth more profound, and more disturbing, than whatever the strict dictates of realism allow….[P]ropulsive and mesmerizing, laced with vivid descriptions of the grotesque…and the darkest humor.”New York Times Book Review

“…[S]lim but phenomenal…in [Enriquez’s] hands, the country’s inequality, beauty, and corruption tangle together to become a manifestation of our own darkest thoughts and fears. The spookiness of these 12 stories sets into the reader’s mind like a jet stone, sparkling through all that darkness.”Vanity Fair

“Enriquez's particular gift is to intuit that horror and ghost stories - ancient genres, as old as humanity itself - might make better gateways into a country's past than straightforward narrative. Her ghosts are not conventional spectres, by any means; it is the people - homeless street children, groups of women with a collective history around burns - and the places that she writes about that are demon-haunted.”Financial Times

“Things We Lost in the Fire is a searing, striking portrait of the social fabric of Argentina and the collective consciousness of a generation affected by a particular stew of history, religion and imagination. Mariana Enriquez has a truly unique voice and these original, provocative stories will leave a lasting imprint.”The Rumpus

"Mariana Enriquez’s eerie short story collection, Things We Lost in the Fire, looks at contemporary life in Argentina through a strange, surreal, and often disturbing lens. In 12 stories containing black magic, a child serial killer, women setting themselves on fire to protest domestic violence, ghosts, demons, and all kinds of monsters, Enriquez unforgettably brings horror and the macabre to life."—Buzzfeed, "31 Incredible New Books You Need To Read This Spring"

"Violent and cool, told in voices so lucid they feel spoken, these 12 tales present a gothic portrait of a country tilting uneasily away from the memory of horrific traumas, as new ones lurk around every corner.”The Boston Globe, "The Best Fiction Books of 2017"

“These stunning, incandescent stories... crackle with sophisticated weirdness, illuminating everyday activities against the underbelly of the macabre… Similar to Shirley Jackson and Jac Jemc, Enríquez is certain to dazzle and discomfit.”Booklist

“[S]taggering in its nuanced ability to throw readers off balance… rich descriptions of narcos, addicts, muggers, and transvestites quickly transport readers to an alien world… A rich and malcontent stew of stories about the everyday terrors that wait around each new corner.”Kirkus

“Mariana Enriquez is a mesmerizing writer who demands to be read. Like Bolaño, she is interested matters of life and death, and her fiction hits with the force of a freight train. "The Dirty Kid" is one of the most memorable and brave stories I’ve read in years. It lingers in the mind for weeks, and redefined my sense of Buenos Aires, a city I love dearly.”—Dave Eggers

"These spookily clear-eyed, elementally intense stories are the business. I find myself no more able to defend myself from their advances than Enriquez's funny, brutal, bruised characters are able to defend themselves from life as it's lived."—Helen Oyeyemi

"These stories unsettle; they disturb; they disquiet. Read them!"—Kelly Link

"When I read Mariana Enríquez's stories, I forget where I am. I miss my subway stop. I hold my breath. Her fiction is that pulse-racingly superb, that electric and original. Mariana Enríquez is an essential voice in contemporary fiction, and The Things We Lost in the Fire will be a sensation."—Laura van den Berg

Product Details
ISBN: 9780451495112
ISBN-10: 045149511X
Publisher: Hogarth
Publication Date: February 21st, 2017
Pages: 208
Language: English

Heather's Picks

Akata Witch (The Nsibidi Scripts #1) Cover Image
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text Cover Image
The First Rule of Punk Cover Image
The Pisces: A Novel Cover Image
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Cover Image
My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One Cover Image

how to not be a jerk recs

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America Cover Image
How to Be an Antiracist Cover Image
An African American and Latinx History of the United States (ReVisioning History #4) Cover Image
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning History #3) Cover Image
Women, Race & Class Cover Image