A GUARDIAN BEST TRANSLATED FICTION OF 2024
Violence and desire shatter the smooth surface of the everyday in this exceptional collection of short stories.
A game between a woman’s father and husband simmers and boils into scalding danger; a daughter creates an elaborate feast for her grieving mother; a solar eclipse burns the emotions and truths of a suppressed neighbourhood into the open.
Foregrounding the voices and experiences of women and children and veering from claustrophobic, suffocating suburbia to untamed nature and its great vistas of desert and sky, hungry for what focuses on the terror of normality, prising back its veneer of respectability to reveal the hostility and menace that seethe beneath.
‘An enthralling read.’ Joh Self, Guardian, Five of the best translated fiction of 2024
‘Gripping . . . Never knowing where things might go next becomes part of the pleasure of the book.’ Chris Power, Guardian
‘Seamlessly translated from the Spanish by Kevin Gerry Dunn. . . Bastarós’s meticulous prose has an endless capacity to shock.’ TLS
‘A funny, ferocious, confronting collection of short stories foregrounding the voices and experiences of women and children.’ The Bookseller, Editor’s Choice
‘An important new voice in European literature.’ Irish Times
‘These stories of girlhood and sexuality are wonderfully powerful: sensual in their craftsmanship, devastating in their effect. I keep on going back to them to marvel at Bastaros’ ambition and her risks. I loved, loved, loved this book.’ Naomi Wood
‘These barbed slices of life are always surprising, often funny, nearly always shocking . . . Bastarós also has a deft way with a knife-twist sentence that can utterly stop you in your tracks. Heartily recommended.’ Crack
‘An addictive read that takes us to places where normality turns into delirium.’ Vogue Spain
‘Addictive, risky and structurally impeccable.’ Aixa de la Cruz
‘A Molotov cocktail made into a choral and feminist novel, mocking and poetic.’ Andrea Núñez, Literaturbia
‘An enveloping and disturbing universe that connects with our most primal fears, the reverse side of desire and the terror of the everyday.’ Marta Ailouti, The Objective