Marie Arana and Writing Between Reality and Imagination

Creepy narratives create unease by shifting how reality and imagination interact. Unstable or rapidly destabilizing minds drive ferocious, twisted storytelling with perverse energy. Reader perception becomes part of the effect, with creepiness emerging from interpretation rather than only from events on the page. Short fiction is emphasized as a powerful form for manipulating attention and rereading for its distinctive flavor. Another work uses original, funny yet dead-serious perspectives to portray conquest and its cultural consequences. A rescue plot involving Mexican military figures and an Apache kidnapping is interwoven with historical figures and a contemporary storyline, linking past and present.

"These are creepy stories, but for me, when I finish each one, I'm totally agog, because I realize that the creepiness is in my mind, as a reader. She does this to you. It's kind of a magical thing. I reread these stories to get the flavor of her ability to manipulate a reader's mind."

"This is a book that really confuses the place where reality and imagination meet. I am crazy about Schweblin. She's an Argentinean living in Berlin, and she creates these incredible, ferocious, twisted stories about unstable minds, or minds that are quickly becoming unstable. There's this kind of weird, perverse energy that she puts into her writing that I love."

"Enrigue, who is Mexican, is another favorite writer of mine. His writing is just so original and funny. For example, a previous book of his, " You Dreamed of Empires," is about the conquest of Mexico, told from the point of view of Moctezuma while he is high on mushrooms. You're careering down the halls of the city of Tenochtitlan, and you're encountering the horrible smell of these conquistadores-it's just absolutely hilarious. But at the same time it's dead serious-so many of his books are about the culture shock of conquest, and what is in many ways the end of culture."

"" Now I Surrender " was actually published in Spanish in 2018, but it only just came out in English. It's about a group of Mexican military guys who try to rescue a woman who has been kidnapped by the Apache. At the time in which the book is set, Geronimo was the head of the Apache, so he's a big figure in the book. But Enrigue also interweaves a contemporary story line a"

Read at The New Yorker