In generational harmony with his compatriot Samantha Schweblin, Agustina Bazterrica's is a suggestive narrative that can draw on countless resources and settings. The end always justifies the diversity of means, resources and discourses. Because in this wealth of alternatives ingenuity is demonstrated and the reader willing to never flat arguments, always overflowing with alternatives, is pleasantly surprised.
An end (not an end to each book) that likes the existential touch, that patina that good literature takes on as a brilliant remote idea, with an exquisite approach, overexposed to the circumstances of the characters presented. Dystopias or unexpected twists that range from the external, closer to touch, to smell, to the sight of a world in transformation that forces the parallel mutation of skin and soul. Adapt or die. Survive to tell the tale...
Dystopian approaches and dark fantasies at times, always a transcendental point. A bibliography made in Bazterrica to taste that sophistication of literature with more intention and wiser exposition of what the human condition is. Because placed on the rope or in front of the abyss, its characters face the ultimate essence of being.
Top 3 recommended novels by Agustina Bazterrica
Exquisite corpse
About a virus that ends up spreading among humans is no longer a chilling fictional plot, but rather a feeling that dystopia may be here to stay.
So novels like this hint at a sinister, devastatingly accurate narrative gift of opportunity. Let's hope that the future of our days does not appear to us as a resurgence of extremes like those narrated, even with a cannibalism necessary for survival.
But nothing sounds so far away now, no matter how remote we are represented. Who was going to tell us that everyone would walk down the street with masks, afraid of inoculating the virus with the necessary vital oxygen?
Dystopias have gone from being located on the science fiction shelves of bookstores and libraries to moving to the current affairs section, rethinking the character of the fantastic as literature of greater weight. It has been little by little, since Margaret Atwood and her feminist demands from the handmaid's tale to the viral apocalypse that hovers on the threshold of the fully real...
Because of a deadly virus that affects animals and infects humans, the world has become a gray, skeptical and inhospitable place, and society is divided between those who eat and those who are eaten.
What remainder of humanism can fit when the bodies of the dead are cremated to avoid their consumption? Where is the link with the other if, really, we are what we eat? In this ruthless dystopia as brutal as it is subtle, as allegorical as it is realistic, Agustina Bazterrica inspires, with the explosive power of fiction, sensations and highly topical debates.
In animals we may not appreciate the cruelty of the food chain. When we observe the lion eating the gazelle, we assume the fate of things. But of course, what happens when the need and urgency move to the human stage. Reason, the differential fact, is then obscured to the point of posing unimaginable dilemmas.
The unworthy ones
Optimism cannot occur. Because we all know that a pessimist is an informed optimist. And information is overflowing today. Look away and wait for it to happen. While writers like Agustina are in charge of proposing dystopias, utopias perhaps of a few where everything happens at the dictate of the worst rulers in tune with that world that is always a but.
The world went through water wars and environmental catastrophes. The days go from freezing to suffocating in a matter of hours, the air is saturated with foul odors and the sky is covered with thick, sticky fogs like spider webs.
In this desolate present, confined in the House of the Sacred Brotherhood, several women survive subjected to the designs of a religious cult and are subjected to torture and sacrifices in the name of enlightenment. They are all under the strict command of the Superior Sister, above whom only "He" stands. Who is he? Little is known; No one can see him, but from the shadows he dominates them.
Narrated through the scattered entries of the diary in which the protagonist keeps a record of the ceremonies and her discoveries, this book of the night takes shape. Its pages are hidden in secret recesses, perhaps without hope of liberation; just so that someone knows about them when they are no longer there
Nineteen claws and a dark bird
In the purest Poe style, adjusted to new times and more complex imaginations, Bazterrica goes through the dream like that trance towards vision or madness, that access to planes where anything can happen, where shadows grow and are projected like strange atavistic fears .
Nineteen stories that take us to the heart of our fears, the most delirious and dark fantasies and also the darkest humor. Texts that question love, friendship, family relationships and unspeakable desires. An absorbing read that confirms a unique style and depth in the panorama of literature in Spanish.
