Amparo Davila was born in Mexico in 1928. She has published numerous collections of short stories and for a time worked as Alfonso Reyes's secretary. In recent years a massive resurgence of interest has acknowledged her as one of Mexico's finest masters of the short story. She was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in 1977 and honored with the Medalla Bellas Artes in 2015. A former Mellon Public Scholar, Audrey Harris holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California. A former Mellon Public Scholar, Audrey Harris holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California.
"The Houseguest will make you paranoid; you will second
guess every shadow and slight movement that catches your eye.
Amparo Davila's prose, her psychological awareness, and the beauty
of her characters' misery is encompassing. I cannot believe that
this is the first that I am experiencing Davila in English." --
Nick Buzanski - Book Culture
"Like Poe for the new millennium." -- Kirkus
"For the first time, we finally have a collection of her stories
translated into English and they're as good as, as uncanny and
mesmerizing as, some of the best work by Kafka or Poe." -- Literary
Hub
"Davila is a marvel, and this book casts a delightful and
disconcerting spell." -- Juan Vidal - Los Angeles Times
"Mexico's answer to Shirley Jackson. Davila radiates an interesting
sense of unease and calamity. For a very long time, women have
sought comfort in the darkness when their own lives were full of
quiet despair. It is this silent scream which permeates The
Houseguest." -- Silvia Moreno-Garcia - NPR
"Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Franz Kafka, and Edgar Allen Poe,
Davila tests the limits of fiction." -- Ploughshares
"Filled with nightmarish imagery and creeping dread, Davila's
stories plunge into the nature of fear: Terrifying." -- Publishers
Weekly
"Mexico's high priestess of horror. The world Davila imagines
weighs on the brain like some sort of delirium." -- Robert Rea -
Southwest Review
"Like a dream, Davila's fictional realm is filled with signs and
symbols, with hybrid creatures who appear to defy the laws of
nature, and with characters who do not act according to logic or
reason. Davila has said in interviews that one of her favorite
subjects is the mysterious, the unknown, that which is not within
our grasp. Her writing is intentionally opaque and allows readers
to draw a number of different interpretations; it is this
intriguing, elusive quality that has perhaps led to her enduring
popularity in Mexico." -- The Paris Review
"Readers of Davila's stories find it difficult, perhaps impossible,
to forget them." -- Margaret Randall - World Literature Today
"Each of these stories is equal parts Hitchcock film and razor
blade: austere, immaculately crafted, profoundly unsettling, and
capable of cutting you. Amparo Davila is Kafka by way of Ogawa,
Aira by way of Carrington, Cortazar by way of Somers, and I'm so
grateful she's in translation." -- Carmen Maria Machado
"The work of Amparo Davila is unique in Mexican literature. There
is no one like her, no one with that introspection and complexity."
-- Elena Poniatowska
"Extraordinary. " -- Julio Cortazar
"How is this the first time I am reading Amparo Davila? And when
can I read more from her? In these stories, she creates creates
claustrophobic worlds in miniature and populates them with people
tormented by things we can't see. Whether she is writing about a
wife whose husband brings home a ravenous and frightening guest, a
young woman plagued by a not-completely-unwelcome visitor in the
night, or a family held hostage by their possibly monstrous son,
the horror is subtle-more is suggested than told. Often coupled
with these very real terrors is the knowledge that their
experiences will be doubted. It is easier for these characters to
stay silent than to try and explain the shadowy, strange things
that stalk them. Brief and terrifying, The Houseguest
leaves one feeling that nothing is solid, that reality is a
precarious and ever-changing thing, and that it doesn't take much
to render the ordinary unrecognizable." -- Lauren P., Powell's
Bookstore
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