Tender
A mother and son inhabit an isolated and increasingly dangerous private world.
The third and final installment of Ariana Harwicz's "Involuntary Trilogy" finds us on familiar, disquieting ground. Under the spell of a mother's madness, the French countryside transforms into a dreamscape of interconnected imagery: animals, desire, the functions of the body. Most troublingly: the comfort of a teenage son. Scorning the bourgeois mores and conventionality of their small town, she withdraws him from school and the two embark on ever more antisocial and dangerous behavior. Harwicz is at her best here, building an interior world so robust, and so grotesque, that it eclipses our shared reality. Savage, and savagely funny, she leaves us singed, if not scorched.
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Compared to Nathalie Sarraute and Virginia Woolf, Ariana Harwicz is one of the most radical figures in contemporary Argentinian literature. Her prose is characterised by its violence, eroticism, irony and criticism of the clichés surrounding the notions of the family and conventional relationships. Born in Buenos Aires in 1977, Harwicz studied screenwriting and drama in Argentina, and earned a degree in Performing Arts from the University of Paris VII as well as a Master's in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She has taught screenwriting and written plays, which have been staged in Buenos Aires. Feebleminded (which has also been adapted for the stage in Argentina and Spain) is her second novel and a sequel in an 'involuntary' trilogy, preceded by Die, My Love (Charco Press, 2017) and followed by Precocious. Her fourth novel, Degenerate comes out in June 2019. Die, My Love was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize (2018) and shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize (2018). It has been translated into more than ten languages.
Originally from Buenos Aires and now based in Edinburgh, Carolina Orloff is an experienced translator and researcher in Latin American literature. 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.
Annie McDermott's published and forthcoming translations include Mario Levrero's Empty Words and The Luminous Novel (And Other Stories and Coffee House Press), Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz (co-translation with Carolina Orloff, Charco Press) and City of Ulysses by Teolinda Gersão (co-translation with Jethro Soutar, Dalkey Archive Press). Her translations, reviews and essays have appeared in Granta, The White Review, World Literature Today, Asymptote, the Times Literary Supplement and LitHub, among others. Annie also edits books for Charco Press, including Julián Fuks' Resistance and Giuseppe Caputo's An Orphan World. Her translation of Almada's third novel, Brickmakers, will come out with Charco Press and Graywolf in 2021.
"As ever, Harwicz both impresses and repels with her blistering descriptions of the extremes of human behavior." -Publishers Weekly
"It is hard to match this, or any of the books in this trilogy, for sheer searing memorability." -Irish Times
"Disturbingly brilliant - and brilliantly disturbing - Tender is a satiating end to Harwicz's unconventional collection." -The Wee Review
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Praise for Ariana Harwicz
Uncomfortable and fascinating, Harwicz drags us on a turbulent voyage of self-discovery via the characters' analysis of their own past and present. VANITY FAIR (UK)
Man Booker International Prize (Longlist)
Society of Authors Valle-Inclán Prize (Shortlist)
Best Translated Book Award (Finalist)
Internationaler Literaturpreis (Shortlist)
Republic of Consciousness Prize (Shortlist)
"A touch of David Lynch." -The Guardian
"Celebrating lust and bolshiness with an intensity worthy of Clarice Lispector." -The Times Literary Supplement
"The over-all effect is exacting.... And yet "Die, My Love" isn't truly beholden to plot. The thrill is in the human as animal, and even as parasite." -The New Yorker
"Die, My Love is impressive for the force of the narrator's insatiable rage, which fragments the boundaries of the self. [Anne Enright]" -New York Review of Books
"Unrestrained and unadorned, Harwicz's writing has a wild beauty.... A portrait of motherhood, passion, and mental illness that cuts to the bone." -Kirkus
"We are used to female narrators who occupy one of several familiar niches: blandly 'likeable', 'flawed', or pathological; murderers or abusers who are profiled with just enough sympathy to make us feel humane as we judge them. Harwicz takes us somewhere more profound and forces us to confront the thought that these easy fictional 'explanations' are specious. Lurking inside all of us is the potential for horror."" -Hari Kunzru, author of THE IMPRESSIONIST and GODS WITHOUT MEN
"The prose of Ariana Harwicz embarks on a vertiginous linguistic journey that joyfully shreds all vestiges of common sense."" -María Sonia Cristoff, author of FALSE CALM
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"Dangerously addictive." -The Guardian
"A precise, intense, ruthless mosaic that demands we read carefully, never quickly." -Literary Hub
"Celebrating lust and bolshiness with an intensity worthy of Clarice Lispector." -The Times Literary Supplement
"Harwicz succeeds in luring the reader into the darker aspects of the human mind." -Publishers Weekly
"Ariana Harwicz is the real deal, the very definition of an artist."" -Adam Biles, author of FEEDING TIME
"Ariana Harwicz is wet respite from deathless, sexless, bloodless art. "" -Melissa Broder, author of THE PISCES and SO SAD TODAY
"Ariana Harwicz is an intensely passionate and fearless writer whose irresistible prose deserves to be read far and wide."" -Claire-Louise Bennett, author of POND
"A kick up the arse to the literary novel. Feebleminded disassembles form, sensibility, everything... at once a riot (a revolution!) and a headtrip."" -Joanna Walsh, author of VERTIGO and BREAK.UP
"Harwicz achieves an asphyxiating writing, saturated with images of great beauty despite their disturbing character." -El País
"The acoustic quality of her prose, the pulse of her voice, the intensity of her imagery make her subjects so daring, so relentless, so damned and unconventional - very hard to drop or ever to forget."" -Lina Meruane
