The Dangers of Smoking in Bed | Granta

  • Published: 01/04/2021
  • ISBN: 9781783786718
  • Granta Books
  • 208 pages

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

Mariana Enriquez

Translated by Megan McDowell

‘Mariana Enriquez is a mesmerizing writer who demands to be read. Like Bolaño, she is interested in matters of life and death, and her fiction hits with the full force of a train’ – Dave Eggers

Welcome to Buenos Aires, a city thrumming with murderous intentions and morbid desires, where missing children come back from the dead and unearthed bones carry terrible curses. These brilliant, unsettling tales of revenge, witchcraft, fetishes, disappearances and urban madness spill over with women and girls whose dark inclinations will lead them over the edge.

After you've lived in Enriquez's marvellous brain for the time it takes to read The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, the known world feels ratcheted a few degrees off centre. Smoky, carnal and dazzling

Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies

I loved these twisted, lustful whispers in the dark. There is serious power in this writing

Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters

A weird and wonderful exploration of contemporary horror - cities falling apart, society turning on itself, the loneliness of the internet age. But more than that: these stories are fun. Wild, triggering, sinister, button-pushing fun

Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies

The Author

Mariana Enriquez is an award-winning Argentine novelist and journalist, whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She is the author of Things We Lost in the Fire and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. Our Share of Night was awarded the prestigious Premio Herralde de Novela.

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The Translator

Megan McDowell is the recipient of a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other awards, and has been short- or longlisted four times for the International Booker Prize. Her most recent translated books is Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez. She lives in Santiago, Chile

Photograph © Camila Valdés

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From the Same Author

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‘They cried as if they weren’t to blame for any of it. We hated innocent people.’