5.5 They’re Not Metaphorical Demons: Mariana Enriquez and Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra (CH)

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Booker Prize shortlister Mariana Enriquez, author of Things We Lost in the Fire and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, joins Penn State professor Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra and host Chris Holmes to talk about her most recent novel, Our Share of Night, her first to be translated into English. Our Share of Night follows a spiritual medium, Juan, who can commune with the dead and with the world of demons, and his son, Gaspar, as they go on a road trip to outrun a secretive occult society called The Order that hopes to use Juan and Gaspar in their unholy quest for immortality. Publishers Weekly called it “A masterpiece of literary horror.” In a wide-ranging conversation, Mariana reflects on being a horror writer in Argentina, a country that obsesses over its traumatic past. Indeed, Mariana’s interest in writing fiction in the horror genre was prompted by hearing her first horror stories, the terrors of torture and disappearances under the Argentine Junta government. The three discuss Mariana’s use of violence, especially when it involves children; the various afterlives of the translations of Mariana’s award-winning fiction; and the arborescence of the novel form. Humor and dry wit cut through these weighty topics to make for a lively conversation with one of Latin America’s most important contemporary writers.

Mentioned in this Episode:

SilvinaOcampo
Mariana Enriquez, La Hermana Menor
–The Things We Lost in the Fire
–The Dirty Kid
Ray Bradbury, The October Country
José Donoso
Juan Carlos Onetti
Ernesto Sabato
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Ingmar Bergman, The Hour of the Wolf
A Nightmare on Elm Street (film)
Titane (film)
Pope John Paul II
The Oulipo Movement
Aleister Crowley

Listen and Read:

Audio: They’re Not Metaphorical Demons

Transcript: 5.5 They’re Not Metaphorical Demons

We Better Laugh About It: A Discussion with Álvaro Enrigue and Maia Gil’Adí – Novel Dialogue

Álvaro Enrigue and critic Maia Gil’Adí begin their conversation considering translation as a living process, one that is internal to the novel form. Álvaro, author of the trippy You Dreamed of Empires (Riverhead, 2024), explains how the opening letter to his translator Natasha mirrors the letter to his editor, Teresa, in Spanish, and how both letters become part of the fiction. Fitting for a novel that crosses Nahua and Mayan, Moctezuma and Cortés, Mexican history and the glam rock band T. Rex. The English translation—which Álvaro calls the book of Natasha—is longer, filled with changes and additions and revisions, and so translation becomes “another life for the book.” From the living book to its contents, Maia asks how You Dreamed of Empires blends the gorgeous and the grotesque, slapstick humor and extreme violence, historical detail and mischievous metafictional departures. Álvaro links his work to Season 9’s theme of TECH by pointing out the novel’s longstanding use as a tool to laugh about the powerful, to tell them that what they’re saying is not true, and to articulate politics through contradiction and humor. After discussing the encounter of Moctezuma and Cortés (or really, of their translators, including a very magical bite of cactus) as the moment that changes everything in history, Álvaro makes a surprising historical swerve in his answer to this season’s signature question. Mentions:Álvaro Enrigue, Sudden Death, You Dreamed of Empires, Now I SurrenderNahuaNatasha WimmerTeresa Ariño, AnagramaSergio Pitol, Enrique Vila-Matas, Javier Marías, Roberto BolañoMiguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote; Laurence Sterne; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s TravelsOctavio Paz saying New Spain was a kingdom in One Earth, Four or Five Worlds: Reflections on Contemporary History, translated by Helen R. Lane.Edward SaidLèse-majestéT. Rex, “Monolith”Gonzalo GuerreroThe Colegio de Santa Cruz de TlatelolcoJosé Emilio PachecoMichel FoucaultMichelangeloSaint Paul, Epistle to the RomansNoam ChomskyTlaxcalas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
  1. We Better Laugh About It: A Discussion with Álvaro Enrigue and Maia Gil’Adí
  2. 9.5 Who Owns These Tools? Vauhini Vara and Aarthi Vadde (SW)
  3. 9.4 “That In Between Time,” Fernanda Trías and Heather Cleary (MAT)
  4. 9.3 Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (JP)
  5. 9.2 Monstrous Dreaming: Lauren Beukes and Andrew Pepper
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