A Novel in Which Nightmares Are All Too Real
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Loading... - Lelia Messi
- 14 Mar 2023
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The Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez shows how violence can haunt and destabilize a civilization.
In 1976, the Argentine armed forces staged a coup against the president of Argentina, Isabel Perón. In short order, the military installed a junta that suspended political parties and various government functions, aggressively pursued free-market policies, and disappeared thousands of people over the next seven years. Victims of the regime—suspected dissidents or “subversives”—were abducted, tortured, and murdered, and many were buried in unmarked, mass graves. This period of state terror, the so-called Dirty War, has left a legacy of trauma that bedevils Argentina to this day.
The Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez’s grand, eloquent, and startling new novel, Our Share of Night, begins during this crisis and unfolds across subsequent and preceding years. We see Argentina attempt to reorient itself after years of chaos and glimpse the conditions that precipitated the turmoil. Most notable, Enriquez also shows how genre elements—including horror and the supernatural—can expand the possibilities of literary fiction. In short, Our Share of Night, Enriquez’s first novel to be published in English, reveals how sometimes, only fiction can fully illuminate the monstrous, indescribable, and ultimately shattering aspects of our reality. Read More..
