Die My Love
Description
Man Booker International Prize 2018 --Longlist
In a forgotten patch of French countryside, a woman is battling her demons: embracing exclusion yet wanting to belong, craving freedom whilst feeling trapped, yearning for family life but wanting to burn the entire house down. Given surprising leeway by her family for her increasingly erratic behaviour, she nevertheless feels ever more stifled and repressed. Motherhood, womanhood, the banality of love, the terrors of desire, the brutality of 'another person carrying your heart forever' Die, My Love faces all this with a raw intensity. It's not a question of if a breaking point will be reached, but rather when, and how violent a form will it take?
It's impossible to come out unscathed from reading Ariana Harwicz. The language of Die, My Love cuts like a scalpel even as it attains a kind of cinematic splendour, evoking the likes of John Cassavetes, David Lynch and John Ford. In a text that explores the destabilising effects of passion and its absence, immersed in the psyche of a female protagonist always on the verge of madness (in the tradition of Sylvia Plath and Clarice Lispector), Harwicz moulds language, submitting it to her will in irreverent prose. Bruising and confrontational, yet anchored in an unapologetic beauty and lyricism, Die, My Love is a unique reading experience that quickly becomes addictive.
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About the Author
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.
Sarah Moses is a writer and translator. Her stories, translations and interviews have appeared in various journals, including The Argentina Independent and Brick. She is Asymptote's editor-at-large for Argentina, and divides her time between Buenos Aires and her native Toronto.
Reviews
- Man Booker International Prize 2018 --Longlist
- Republic of Consciousness Prize 2018 --Shortlist
- Society of Authors Valle Inclán Prize 2018 --Shortlist
- Internationaler Literaturpreis 2019 (Germany) --Shortlist
Reviews/Endorsements
"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
"A touch of David Lynch." --The Guardian
"Unrestrained and unadorned, Harwicz's writing has a wild beauty.... A portrait of motherhood, passion, and mental illness that cuts to the bone." --Kirkus Reviews
"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