Agustina Bazterrica, author: “No matter how deconstructed you are, the basis of the system is completely sexist” | Culture | EUROtoday

Who says you would not be capable to acknowledge a assassin in your taxi driver by observing two coats of polish rigorously utilized to his nails? And what in regards to the chance that an alien is definitely hiding behind the acquainted face of a girlfriend? In the tales of Agustina Bazterrica (Buenos Aires, 52 years previous), certainties come from some distant place within the unconscious the place every thing that may exist at all times does so by revealing its darkish aspect. The Argentine writer, widespread for her stark dystopias, recovers a set of tales revealed in a small publishing home in 2016 that she has now revised and expanded in Nineteen claws and a darkish chicken (Alfaguara), a pattern of cruelties generally crossed by caustic humor that provides a possibility, as the author factors out: “Let the readers see how I was thinking before exquisite corpse”.

With that novel (revealed in Spain in 2018 by Alfaguara), Bazterrica bought greater than 1,000,000 copies in 30 languages ​​and have become identified internationally by means of the fascinating and atrocious story of a world ravaged by a suspicious virus that impacts animals however not people, an invisible hazard that acts as a vector of “fear of what you cannot control.” Lacking pigs or cows to feed themselves, these mirrors of the close to future resolve to boost folks to fulfill their starvation for meat.

In his subsequent novel, The unworthy ones (Alfaguara, 2023), the writer continued to provide free rein to her grotesque creativeness, this time by means of a sinister feminine non secular brotherhood subjected to the designs of a single man with out identify or face, who, immersed in a world devastated this time by know-how and local weather change, tortures its members as a technique of social coercion.

Faced with the seriousness of these two books, Nineteen claws and a darkish chicken It is offered as one other, one might say, playful proposal. With a patent however tempered brutality, and an equally disturbing tone. Here, the author doesn’t confront the reader with the apocalypse, there are not any cataclysms, however she does proceed to position him earlier than the urgency of the instances: themes reminiscent of loneliness, love mourning or obsession with look, but in addition larger horrors reminiscent of baby abuse, parade of their most annoying model. “I believe that both utopias and dystopias are two sides of the same coin,” feedback the author in a central lodge in Madrid, the place she went on the finish of January to take part as a jury for the 2026 Alfaguara Novel Prize. “In one case it is about saying: it would be great to reach this point of well-being and more rights; and in the other: if we continue down this path, perhaps we will reach this horrible place.”

Behind the discomfort brought on by the “experimental” tales of Nineteen claws… hidden, as in all the writer’s literature, is a need to accompany the reader to the brink of the doable, of that which isn’t essentially however might develop into a actuality the least anticipated day: it already occurred, with out going any additional, with the virus that was invented a number of years earlier than the pandemic. “In reality, everything I narrate can happen, or has already happened, what happens is that I take it to the extreme. exquisite corpse It seems almost fantastic and yet it is not. Many conditions would have to be met, but there have already been cannibal empires and cannibalism could re-emerge: it is part of the human condition, that is why it is a taboo that generates rejection and attraction as well,” he says of that novel that unleashed a phenomenon on TikTok, in particular its more than 20 pages of macabre description of the operation of a human slaughterhouse.

Behind everything the author tells, a key is revealed to be fundamental to approaching her writing: a permanent reflection on the power of the word, manifested in what her characters say and remain silent as well as in the registers of the language she uses, from the surgical narration of exquisite corpse to the poetics of The unworthy onespassing through the expression of class speech in Nineteen claws…

In his next book, in fact, he already announces that he will push the exploration of Argentine slang to the limit. “I think it has a lot to do with the influence of Juan José Saer, who is my favorite Argentine writer,” responds Bazterrica, who is usually related to different horror authors of her era—from Mariana Enriquez to Samanta Schweblin and María Fernanda Ampuero—, grouped beneath the heading of “new Latin American Gothic.” “Although there is this wave, which is paving the way for other writers, there is still a long way to go, because this was happening in history a minute ago,” she factors out.

Feminism, a current that runs through the narrative of you unworthy them, It was already shown in the stories of Nineteen claws… drawn through its reverse side, misogyny. “No matter how deconstructed you are, the basis of the system is completely sexist,” the writer argues. “Look how there are even setbacks: now there are people telling you on the networks that women have to return to the traditional.” Likewise, in these stories we can see his first approaches to other themes that he would later develop in his novels: ideas such as the ethics of food and the abuses that give rise to capitalism or organized religion. “I am not interested in literature that wants to conquer the minds of readers and that has a moral message, but rather that which makes you reflect,” points out the author, who claims to write out of an “impulse” that she has had in her since she was little. “I am very grateful for everything that is happening with my books,” she acknowledges, “but I continue working in the same way as when no one read me.”