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Seven Empty Houses
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi, Gisela Chipe, Ines del Castillo, Daisy Guevara, Lee Osorio, Elena Rey, Victoria Villarreal
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
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Seven Empty Houses
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Publisher's Summary
Winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature
A blazing new story collection that will make you feel like the house is collapsing in on you, from the 3 time International Booker Prize finalist, "lead[ing] a vanguard of Latin American writers forging their own 21st-century canon.”–O, the Oprah magazine
The seven houses in these seven stories are strange. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. But in Samanta Schweblin's tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back inside: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child's first encounter with darkness or the fallibility of parents.
In each story, twists and turns will unnerve and surprise: Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin, revealing surreal truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others. This is a masterwork from one of our most brilliant modern writers.
Cover art: Detail of "Le modele vivant" by René Magritte, 1953 / © 2022 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo © Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images
What the critics say
"Rejoice! Just when we’re settling into fall, all cozy on the couch with a Netflix show queued up, a new short story collection from Samanta Schweblin is here to spit in your pumpkin spiced latte and drag its nails down the wall. Seven Empty Houses... takes aim at the place we feel safest: home. Darker and more tinged with terror than her breakthrough novel, Fever Dream, this is Schweblin at her sharpest and most ferocious."—New York Times Book Review
"[H]er newest collection may be her most unsettling.... The spectacular and strange stories in Seven Empty Houses, translated by Schweblin’s longtime English translator Megan McDowell, pertain to nothing more mysterious than mistaken perceptions, debilitating grief and the often-torturous passage of time."—Washington Post
"[A] sense of dreamlike menace infuses the linked fictions in Samanta Schweblin’s Seven Empty Houses, beautifully translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell.... These stories pulse with blood and lust, ego and id, as Schweblin punches above her weight.... Schweblin is at the forefront of emerging Latin American writers, defiant and assured, swaggering among the jungles of sex, love, and politics."—Oprah Daily