The Houseguest And Other Stories [Paperback]

Like those of Kafka, Poe, Leonora Carrington, or Shirley Jackson, Amparo D?vilas stories are terrifying, mesmerizing, and expertly craftedyoull finish each one gasping for air. With acute psychological insight, D?vila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, and fear. She is a writer obsessed with obsession, who makes nightmares come to life through the everyday: loneliness sinks in easily like a razor-sharp knife, some sort of evil lurks in every shadow, delusion takes the form of strange and very real creatures. After readingLike Poe for the new millennium.For the first time, we finally have a collection of her stories translated into English and theyre as good as, as uncanny and mesmerizing as, some of the best work by Kafka or Poe.D?vila is a marvel, and this book casts a delightful and disconcerting spell.Mexico's answer to Shirley Jackson. D?vila radiates an interesting sense of unease and calamity. For a very long time, women have sought comfort in the darkness when their own lives were full of quiet despair. It is this silent scream which permeates?Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Franz Kafka, and Edgar Allen Poe, Davila tests the limits of fiction.Filled with nightmarish imagery and creeping dread, D?vilas stories plunge into the nature of fear: Terrifying.Mexicos high priestess of horror. The world D?vila imagines weighs on the brain like some sort of delirium.Like a dream, D?vilas fictional realm is filled with signs and symbols, with hybrid creatures who appear to defy the laws of nature, and with characters who do not act according to logic or reason. D?vila has said in interviews that one of her favorite subjects is the mysterious, the unknown, that which is not within our grasp. Her writing is intentionally opaque and allows readers to draw a number of different interpretations; it is this intriguing, elusive quality that has perhaps led to her enduring popularity in Mexico.Readers of D?vilas stories lš