INTERNATIONAL BESTELLER • A haunting, unforgettable collection of tales by Samanta Schweblin, winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature and three-time Booker Prize finalist.

“Nobody understands the balance of light and darkness of the human mind as well as Samanta Schweblin. She is a master of the edge, of the contour, the suggestion. The most brilliant writer of short stories writing today, she now delivers her most haunting, fierce and provocative book.”—Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive

"Schweblin creates characters whose lifelines reach some of the most extraordinary questions ever articulated in our literature." —Karen Russell, author of The Antidote and Swamplandia!

“In Samanta Schweblin’s hands a single story becomes a theory of just about everything. You can hear all the atoms of the universe bouncing around. Remarkably taut, clear, precise, and yet capable of capturing the extent of our human messiness, these stories are perfect for the times we dwell inside.” —Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin


The characters of Good and Evil find themselves at a point of no return, dazzled by the glare of impending tragedy. Vulnerable and profoundly human, they become trapped in the instant in which the uncanny has lurched into their lives. Some are transformed, some are isolated, others waver between guilt or tenderness. All of them are riven by uncertainty.

Schweblin’s prose uses tension and truth to construct a literary universe in which the monsters of everyday life come so close to us that we can almost feel their breath. Her writing provokes awe and disquiet, a state of alarm that at the same time transports us to a hypnotic world as recognizable as it is strange.