| Mariana Enriquez |
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez review – political horror
Set in the decades during and after Argentina’s military dictatorship, this occult treatment of the ‘dirty war’ fuses political allegory and gleeful gore
Sam Byers
Thursday 27 October 2022
In 2017, Things We Lost in the Fire by Argentinian writer Mariana Enríquez introduced a compelling new voice to English readers. Tough-edged and tightly honed, her short stories inhabited the space between high gothic horror and cruel sociopolitical reality. At its best, her writing had a cool, brutal economy:
We moved. My brother still went crazy. He killed himself at twenty-two. I was the one who identified his ruined body … He didn’t leave a note. He told me his dreams were always about Adela. In his dreams, our friend didn’t have fingernails or teeth; she was bleeding from the mouth, her hands bled.