Author(s): Ariana Harwicz

Novel | Translated fiction | Argentina | Charco Press | Fiction Reductions

Following the international success of Die, My Love (longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2018), Ariana Harwicz again takes us into the darkest recesses of the imagination with this delirious, furious account of a mother and daughter bound by chaos as much as love. Driven to the edge by the men in their lives, they oscillate between erratic bursts of housework, lazing in the garden, and drunken escapades. But is the constant undercurrent of violence all in the daughter's mind or will they actually go through with their plan for revenge? With a shocking, edge-of-the-seat finale worthy of Thelma & Louise if it were remade by David Lynch, Feebleminded is a wild ride of a novel with echoes of Ágota Kristóf, Elfriede Jelinek and Alan Warner, and will leave you both shaken and begging for more.

In Feebleminded, Harwicz drags us to the border between fascination and discomfort as she explores aspects of desire, need and dependency through the dynamics between a mother and her daughter, searching through their respective lives to find meaning and define their own relationship.

Written in a wild stream of consciousness narration in the best tradition of Virginia Woolf and Nathalie Sarraute, and embedded in a current trend of elusive violence so ingrained in contemporary Latin American fiction, Feebleminded follows the pair on a roller coaster of extreme emotions and examinations into the biographies of their own bodies where everything – from a childhood without answers to a desolate, loveless present – has been buried.

Told through brief but extremely powerful chapters, this short lyrical novel follows Die, My Love as the second part in what Harwicz has termed an ‘involuntary trilogy’.  An incredibly insightful interrogation on the human condition, desire and the burden of deep-rooted family mandates.

FEEBLEMINDED (published by Charco Press in May 2019) is her second novel and the second instalment of an ‘involuntary’ trilogy, preceded by DIE, MY LOVE (Charco Press, 2017) and followed by PRECOZ [PRECOCIOUS, 2015]. Her fourth novel is DEGENERADO [DEGENERATE], which comes out in Spanish in January 2019.

ARIANA HARWICZ

 (b. Buenos Aires, 1977) is one of the most radical figures in contemporary Argentinian literature, compared to Nathalie Sarraute and Virginia Woolf. Her prose is characterised by its violence, eroticism, irony and direct criticism of the clichés surrounding the notions of the family and conventional relationships. Harwicz studied screenwriting and drama in Argentina, and earned a first degree in Performing Arts from the University of Paris VII as well as a Master’s degree in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She has taught screenwriting and written two plays, which have been staged in Buenos Aires. 

AUTHOR:

Originally from Buenos Aires and now based in Edinburgh, Carolina Orloff is an experienced translator and researcher in Latin American literature, who has published extensively on the writer Julio Cortázar as well as on literature, cinema, politics and translation theory. In 2016, after obtaining her PhD and working in the academic sector for several years, Carolina co-founded Charco Press where she acts as publishing director and main editor. She is also the co-translator of Ariana Harwicz’s DIE, MY LOVE, one of Charco’s inaugural titles, longlisted for the Man Booker International 2018 and shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize.

Annie McDermott translates fiction and poetry from Spanish and Portuguese, and is currently working on novels by the Uruguayan writer Mario Levrero for And Other Stories and Coffee House Press.  Her translations of poems by Sergio Loo appeared in ALBA LONDRES 06: CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN POETRY and THE WHITE REVIEW.