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Megan McDowell

Biography

Megan McDowell

Megan McDowell is the recipient of a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been shortlisted or longlisted four times for the International Booker Prize. She lives in Santiago, Chile.

Megan McDowell

Books by Megan McDowell

written by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell - Fiction, Short Stories

The seven houses in these seven stories are strange. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. But in Samanta Schweblin's tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back inside: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child's first encounter with darkness or the fallibility of parents. In each story, twists and turns will unnerve and surprise. Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin, revealing surreal truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others.

written by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell - Fiction, Gothic, Horror, Suspense, Thriller

A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality. For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?

written by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell - Fiction, Short Stories

Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken --- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history --- with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.

written by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell - Fiction

They've infiltrated homes in Hong Kong, shops in Vancouver, the streets of Sierra Leone, town squares in Oaxaca, schools in Tel Aviv, bedrooms in Indiana. They're everywhere. They're here. They're us. They're not pets, or ghosts, or robots. They're real people, but how can a person living in Berlin walk freely through the living room of someone in Sydney? How can someone in Bangkok have breakfast with your children in Buenos Aires, without your knowing? Especially when these people are completely anonymous, unknown, unfindable. The characters in LITTLE EYES reveal the beauty of connection between far-flung souls --- but they also expose the ugly side of our increasingly linked world.

written by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell - Fiction, Short Stories

Samanta Schweblin haunts and mesmerizes in this extraordinary collection featuring women on the edge, men turned upside down, the natural world at odds with reality. We think life is one way, but often it’s not --- our expectations for how people act, love and fear can all be upended. Each character in MOUTHFUL OF BIRDS must contend with the unexpected, whether a family coming apart at the seams or a child transforming or a ghostly hellscape or a murder. Schweblin’s stories have the feel of a sleepless night, where every shadow and bump in the dark take on huge implications, leaving your pulse racing, and the line between the real and the strange blurs.

written by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell - Fiction, Literary Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. FEVER DREAM is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale.

written by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell - Fiction, Humor, Satire

Written in the form of a standardized test, MULTIPLE CHOICE invites the reader to respond to virtuoso language exercises and short narrative passages through multiple-choice questions that are thought-provoking, usually unanswerable and often absurd. It offers a new kind of reading experience, one in which the reader participates directly in the creation of meaning, and the nature of storytelling itself is called into question. At once funny, poignant and political, MULTIPLE CHOICE is about love and family, authoritarianism and its legacies, and the conviction that, rather than learning to think for ourselves, we are trained to obey and repeat.